Video footage shows the harrowing incident in which a young woman almost fell to her death at the Grand Canyon. Emily Koford, 20, was stepping backwards to get the right angle for a photo of her mother, when she temporarily lost her footing.
Koford was visiting the Arizona landmark with her mother, Erin, on October 28, when the event unfolded as they stopped to take a picture. Kevin Fox, who filmed the video, was watching on from a nearby ledge on the south rim of the canyon. In the footage, he swoops around the park, illustrating just how high up the pair is and how far anyone stepping over the edge would be falling.
In the clip, we can see the heart-stopping moment Koford is so focused on the picture that she isn’t looking where she’s placing her feet. She ends up almost slipping off the edge entirely. In some places, the canyon is more than a mile deep, meaning death is almost certain.
Speaking to ABC News about the near-miss, Koford’s mother, Erin, said: "I saw that the ledge was right there and I said: 'Don’t take another step back.'" She said her stomach "went up into [her] chest" when she saw her daughter stumble. After it happened, she "was scared and angry all at the same time." In the video, she can be seen grabbed and shaking her daughter. She says she remembers saying: "You just scared me to death, Emily."
Emily told ABC her mother was "gritting her teeth she was so mad."
ABC said there have been a reported 64 deaths since the National Park opened, including 17 last year.
That made it to the news? Wow.
And made it onto here because it had the word 'photo' in it.
Slow news day.
-.-
Notice that even after a near harrowing experience, they both remain out there! SMDH!
Tourons!
Wtf? I don't get how can you stand on cliff like this one and just conveniently forget about your spatial awareness because you want to take a cool photo.
Common sense is being bred out of civilisation.
If she’d fallen it would have been someone else’s fault for not putting a sign of barrier there to warn that a when combining a long fall and subsequent splatter, it is invariably fatal.
You do have an interesting point. As someone born outside of US I can confirm this country is quite big on babysitting people thru some common sense stuff. Combining it with a high level of civil litigation is almost like encouraging folks to live in a bubble and not watch out for themselves unless they are specifically told to do so.
Very lucky.
Chase the light, not the like....
64 deaths and 17 of them last year? Hasn’t this park been open for almost 100 years? Is there a freakin murderer running around? Is that entirely massive uptick completely the result of selfies?
Its the lizard people that inhabit the grand canyon. They are getting sick of filing noise complaints so they are taking matters into their own hands..... er claws now.