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A 42-year-old man died last Wednesday, after falling over a rail at Wrigley Field following a Chicago Cubs game on Tuesday night. According to police, Richard Garrity, 42, of Wheaton, climbed on a rail, holding a red cup and then fell backward. He hit his head on the concrete below and was then taken to a hospital.
Garrity was pronounced dead at 3:33 p.m. Wednesday at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center.
Via the Chicago Sun-Times:
Police said two associates of Garrity saw him climb on the handrail with the cup before he fell. A stadium employee heard the fall, but didn’t see it. The Cook County medical examiner’s office has ruled the death an accident.
Garrity, a marketing manager for Heineken, was at the Cubs’ win over the Cincinnati Reds. He was on a work outing with his wife. Cubs officials believe they were sitting in Section 239, which is in the main grandstand, close to the right-field foul pole. Garrity, the father of a boy and a girl, was leaving the game shortly before 11 p.m. after most fans had exited the stadium, officials said. He fell over a handrail on a ramp leading from the upper deck to the terrace level, officials said.
The tragedy here is that a boy and girl don’t have a father anymore and a wife lost her husband. Of course it was dumb to climb a rail, but let’s not go overboard trashing this guy. Those kids just lost their dad.
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The height of the rails at Wrigley Field are shorter than at other ballparks, but obviously the height had nothing to do with the incident.
The handrail that Garrity fell over was 36 inches high. Some major league ballparks have 42-inch handrails.
“Given the age of our ball park, we have been grandfathered,” said Julian Green, vice president of communications for the Cubs. The height of the railing “in no way contributed to this incident.”