A THIRD tourist in just over a month has died after falling from an aparthotel balcony in Magaluf (Mallorca) – this time a British man aged 19.
He was found in the early hours of this morning (Thursday) on the ground by a hotel worker and appears to have been killed outright after plunging 20 metres (65 feet).
Staff confirm he had not been a guest at the hotel but was staying in another next door, leading police to believe he may have been visiting friends there.
The first fatal victim of the summer season was a 20-year-old Irish holidaymaker who fell from his terrace on the C/ Torrenova on Sunday, June 3 in the same apartment block where a Scottish woman aged 19 met the same fate in April.
On exactly the same street but in a different building and almost a month to the day, a 25-year-old man, believed to be French, fell from a third-floor balcony.
Two days later, a man aged 23 – whose nationality has not been revealed – plunged from a fifth-floor hotel room on the C/ Martín Ros García and was rushed to Palma de Mallorca's Son Espases hospital in a critical condition, but it has not been confirmed whether he has survived.
And in early May, four days after the Scottish woman died, another male holidaymaker aged 30 was extremely badly injured in a balcony fall.
British and Spanish authorities launched a video appeal at the beginning of this season with a now-famous GP called Doctor Segura, who explains the horrors of 'balconing' accidents in English.
This foolhardy stunt of jumping from balcony to pool below causes a string of deaths and permanent serious injuries among holidaymakers, mostly young, male and British, every summer.
But many falls are accidental, caused by tourists hopping across terraces as a short cut to friends' rooms or into their own if they lose their keys, or simply by overbalancing when they are very drunk.
It is not known how any of this year's injuries and fatalities were caused.
