A witness at the Georgia Dome claims it took medical personnel 15 minutes to come to aid of the fan that fell from the upper deck Friday night.
The Georgia World Congress Center Authority says that’s not true at all.
EMTs arrived on the scene a minute after Isaac Grubb, 20, of Lenoir City, Tenn., fell 45 feet after celebrating a touchdown during the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game between the University of Tennessee and North Carolina State, said spokeswoman Jennifer LeMaster.
“He had a very short life,” the victim’s grandmother Mary Ruth Grubb said. “But boy he packed a lot of stuff into it. A lot of fun for himself, a lot of entertainment for us and a love for all of us.”
But it appears Grubb may have had too much fun at the game.
“We were celebrating our first touchdown,” a Tennessee fan told Channel 2 Action News. “He was kind of celebrating over the side and then fell over onto the student section on the bottom.”
Toxicology reports have not come back yet, but investigators do believe LeMaster had been drinking.
“The victim did consume prior to entering the Georgia Dome and started consuming alcohol at 5 p.m.,” GWCC Police Lt. Chad Hurston said Saturday.
But according to the GWCC, none of that alcohol game from vendors at the Dome.
“We have a zero tolerance policy for serving minors,” LeMaster said. “We have extensive training on when to cut [patrons] off.” The legal age for buying alcohol in Georgia is 21.
Two fans in Section 311, behind the end zone, were sitting near Grubb when he fell.
William Fossett, a Tennessee fan from Paducah, Ky., said, “He was just laying there [in the section below] between rows. It took like 15 minutes for the medical workers to get there.”
But LeMaster says that’s not the case. Grubb entered the Dome at 7:23 p.m. He fell over the railing an hour later. EMTs arrived at 8:24 p.m. after responding to an emergency dispatch inside the Dome, LeMaster said. By 8:28 more EMTs arrived. Three minutes after that, Grubb was carried out of the Dome on a gurney He made it to Grady Memorial Hospital at 8:55 p.m., the spokeswoman said.
“There’s nothing in our investigation that indicates we need to change anything that we’re currently doing,” LeMaster told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Saturday. “The safety and security of our fans are paramount. It appears to be a tragic accident.” The case was being investigated by the GWCC Police Department, the Fulton ME’s office and the state fire marshal’s office.
Still the victim’s grandmother thinks something should be done to prevent this from happening again.
“It’s too dangerous the way they have things structured,” said Mrs. Grubb. “They need to have taller railings so people can’t tumble over.
Nationwide, it was the second fall at a sporting event last week. A 25-year-old Houston man died after falling about 60 feet from a fifth-floor escalator at Reliant Stadium in Houston during a Thursday preseason Texans game, officials said Friday.
A 34-year-old man from Fort Mill, S.C. was injured by Grubb as he fell. The man, whose name was not disclosed, suffered facial lacerations and was taken to Atlanta Medical Center for treatment. He was later released.
