Another American spring breaker escaped the same fall nine days before Ohio State University student Henry Meacock died after falling from the third-floor terrace of a Puerto Vallarta hotel.
Carter Howell, a 20-year-old student at Georgia University, told the Post that he jumped from the Melia hotel on March 6, less than two weeks before Meacock perished on March 15.
Howell claims he has no recollection of the fall, in which he collided with a second-floor railing on his way down. He claimed he had three small spine injuries, a fractured wrist, a dislocated elbow, and post-traumatic amnesia.
He said that a companion was staying at the hotel with him, but also doesn’t know how he ended up toppling from the hotel terrace.
“It feels like a fever dream,” Howell said. “I was in the air then I was in the hospital looking over at my arm like ‘holy sh-t.’”
After the accident, Howell said nearly 4 inches of bone protruded from his arm. He’s had several operations.
He was horrified to hear that another student had perished as a result of the same drop.
“It’s crazy to me that a week after I fell another kid fell from what sounds like very similar circumstances,” he said.
He was horrified to hear that another student had perished as a result of the same drop.
“I just feel awful for that kid and his family,” Howell added.
Meacock’s family has not spoken openly since the tragic demise of the 19-year-old.
According to the Jalisco state attorney general and medical investigator, the adolescent was attempting to leap from one balcony to another when he died.
Numerous social media posts from locals of Meacock’s birthplace of Westfield, N.J., said he had to attempt to recover an ID or phone from another hotel guest who had fallen through a broken plexiglass platform.
“At the hotel, a girl a room above his dropped her ID and it landed on plexiglass between the balconies,” one wrote on Facebook.
“He tried to get it for her, stepped on the plexiglass and it gave way and he fell.”
