Police to charge man who survived plunge over Niagara Falls<\/p>\n
Tuesday, October 21, 2003 Posted: 2:25 PM EDT (1825 GMT)<\/p>\n
![\"Niagara](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.accessniagara.com\/blog\/media\/story.niagara.survivor.2.jpg?w=640\")
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Kirk Jones waits at the shoreline at the base of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls after surviving a plunge over Niagara Falls.<\/em><\/p>\n NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario (AP) — A man who survived a plunge over Niagara Falls with only the clothes on his back will be charged with illegally performing a stunt, Niagara Parks Police said Tuesday.<\/p>\n Kirk Jones, 40, of Canton, Michigan, is the first person known to have gone over the Canadian Horseshoe Falls without safety devices and lived. He could be fined $10,000.<\/p>\n Stunned tourists described seeing Jones float by on his back Monday in the swift Niagara River, go headfirst over the churning 180-foot waterfall and then pull himself out of the water onto the rocks below.<\/p>\n “He just looked calm. He just was gliding by so fast. I was in shock really that I saw a person go by,” Brenda McMullen told WIVB-TV in Buffalo.<\/p>\n Jones was not seriously injured and remained hospitalized in Niagara Falls in stable condition.<\/p>\n Police said they were ruling out the possibility it was a suicide attempt.<\/p>\n “We’re investigating it as an intentional act,” Niagara Parks Police Inspector Paul Fortier said.<\/p>\n He said psychological tests were being conducted at the hospital.<\/p>\n Fortier said police have a videotape of the act that they believe was made by someone who accompanied Jones. That person has not been charged.<\/p>\n Water rushes over the falls at a rate of 150,000 gallons per second.<\/p>\n Only one other person is known to have survived a plunge over the Canadian falls without a barrel or other contraption — a 7-year-old boy who was wearing a life preserver when he fell into the water in a 1960 boating accident.<\/p>\n No one has ever survived a trip over the narrower and rockier American falls.<\/p>\n Since 1901, 15 daredevils have taken the plunge in barrels or other devices, including a kayak and a water jet-powered personal watercraft. Ten survived, said Niagara Falls historian Paul Gromosiak, who has written books on the subject.<\/p>\n Suicides are not uncommon at Niagara Falls, although police are reluctant to give numbers.<\/p>\n Lynda Satelmajer, of Brampton, Ontario, said she and her family watched the man as he entered the river and then went over the falls.<\/p>\n “He seemed a bit edgy, kind of jumping around,” she said. “He walked over to where we were standing and he jumped and slid down on his backside and went over the brink.<\/p>\n “It was really freaky, actually. He was smiling.”<\/p>\n Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From CNN\/AP (reproduced below): Police to charge man who survived plunge over Niagara Falls Tuesday, October 21, 2003 Posted: 2:25 PM EDT (1825 GMT) Kirk Jones waits at the shoreline at the base of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls after surviving a plunge over Niagara Falls. NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario (AP) — A man who survived a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}