10-year-old boy plummets 80 feet after losing balance during Niagara Falls photo

A 10-year-old boy plummeted approximately 80 feet after losing his balance while trying to take a picture at Niagara Falls.

The boy was sitting on the railing at Niagara Gorge so that his mom could take his photo.

“As he adjusted his seating position on the railing, he lost his balance and fell backwards,” Shawn Black, Sergeant of the Niagara Parks Police Service, said in a press release. “He then fell approximately 80 feet to the gorge floor below.”

He hit his head, resulting in what was originally considered a life-threatening injury.

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Police and the Niagara Emergency Medical Service came to the scene at 4:34 p.m. on Sunday. Officials stabilized the boy and he was airlifted to McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, the press release said.

The hospital later changed his condition to serious but stable.

The boy and his family were visiting the Canadian side of Horseshoe Falls, which is the largest of the three waterfalls in the Niagara Falls Park system.

“The incident was along the retaining wall (parapet wall) paralleling the Niagara River Gorge (approx 500 metres north of the Horseshoe Falls) near the bottom of Murray Hill and the Niagara River Parkway within the parks,” Black said in an email to the Daily News.

Black said statistics on the number of people who have fallen off gorges or waterfalls in the park were not readily available.

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