Woman impaled by beach umbrella in freak accident
WARNING – GRAPHIC CONTENT: A British woman has been impaled by an umbrella in a freak accident while on a beach in the US.
Margaret Reynolds, a 67-year-old woman from London, was visiting Seaside Heights in New Jersey when part of a beach umbrella skewered her leg.
Ricardo Zepeda witnessed the accident, while tanning at the beach less than three metres away from the incident.
“There’s this older woman reading a book to the left of me about 5-8 feet away,” he told Yahoo7.
“[T]hen out of nowhere this gust of wind comes and multiple umbrellas get knocked over while one of them hits the woman,” Mr Zepeda said.
“She screams “My leg” to which I thought she had probably broken it because she was laying on her side with the umbrella sideways over her,” he said.
According to Mr Zepeda, the umbrella spoke went completely through her ankle with a 13 cm portion sticking out from one side.
“A metal part of the umbrella sticking through her upper ankle that had pierced both sides of her leg,” he said.
He said that the portion of the umbrella was blunt piece from the side of the umbrella which was about 5 cm thick.
“They are blunt so the umbrella had to be flying with a great amount of speed to not only pierce the leg but to go that deep into it,” Mr Zepeda said of the incident.
Emergency workers were called to the beach at about 4:30 pm on Monday to detach the woman from the umbrella.
“It had to be cut with bolt cutters in order to move her and take her to the hospital,” Mr Zepeda said.
After a fire crew rescued Ms Reynolds, she was put in an ambulance to Jersey Shore University Medical Centre in Neptune. where she was recovering late on Tuesday.
Police say they do not know exactly how the accident happened. They are investigating whom the umbrella belonged to, for a possible civil charge.
