BOSTON -- Red Sox owner John W. Henry went to the hospital Wednesday night to visit a spectator who apparently vaulted over a Fenway Park staircase railing and fell on a concrete landing below during Wednesday night's game.
The spectator, according to a team source, was a 21-year-old Montreal man who sustained facial fractures and bleeding in the brain. The source termed the injuries serious but "recoverable."
A Red Sox spokesperson said Thursday morning they had no details on the incident, beyond their statement the night before that a fan had been injured in a fall in the Gate B area, was treated by Red Sox medical personnel on site and then transported to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for evaluation.
The incident took place around 8:45 p.m. near the top of a stairway leading to the Budweiser Right Field Roof Deck. Red Sox security personnel and emergency medical technicians attended to the man, who looked to be about 6-foot-1 and was wearing a white T-shirt and tan shorts, according to a former New York City policeman who was at the scene.
The former policeman, who declined to give his name but said he is now a Boston businessman, said he was attending a corporate event with his employees at the park when two of his employees said they saw the man proceed several steps down the stairs, then vault over the railing. The businessman said his employees told him the man landed face-first on the landing. One of his employees, he said, was the first to the scene and turned the man over.
It was at that point, the former policeman said, that he first observed the victim. "His chest was heaving, so he was breathing, but he definitely had a good deal of blood on his forehead.
"I saw him lying face up. He'd lost a shoe. Security kept his shoe."
An ambulance arrived within five to 10 minutes, the witness said, and the man was put in a neck brace before being placed on a gurney and taken down to the ambulance parked outside Gate B.
The area was not sealed off after the man was taken to the hospital.
Gordon Edes covers the Red Sox for ESPNBoston.com.