Fenway Raises Security for Stones Concert
08/23/2005 7:51 AM, AP
Fans at Tuesday's Rolling Stones concert will see more security than on opening night after a woman climbed into the rafters at Fenway Park on Sunday and fell to the seats below.
Twenty-year-old Claire O'Leary, of Westport, Conn., was hospitalized with two broken ankles and a broken wrist after she fell 35 to 40 feet from the rafters above the right-field grandstand.
Additional officers will be stationed in the grandstands on Tuesday night to prevent another such incident. City officials said they hadn't realized a fan could reach the rafters from the stands at Fenway.
Although more than 50 police officers and Red Sox security personnel patrolled the ballpark during Sunday's concert, they didn't see O'Leary climbing.
Emergency workers cleared the seats beneath O'Leary before she fell, which helped avoid injury to other concertgoers, a police spokesman said. Firefighters were also dispatched to bring her down, but they didn't reach her before she fell.
"This is one of those freak things that no one could prevent from happening," Patricia Malone, director of the mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing, told The Boston Globe.
In a statement Monday, Charles Cellucci, director of security and emergency services for the Boston Red Sox, thanked emergency workers for their response to the woman who climbed into the rafters.
"Their work prevented further injury to the fans below and provided her with immediate medical treatment," Cellucci said.
It was unclear whether O'Leary had been under the influence of drugs or alcohol, police said. Office Michael McCarthy, a spokesman for the Boston police, said she was "very belligerent, uncooperative and verbally abusive toward medical staff."
"If she had hit someone (when she fell), she would have killed them," he said. "People need to be responsible for their own actions as well." |
