Less than 48 hours after a 19-year-old French holiday fell to his death from a fifth floor hotel balcony in Magalluf, 18-year-old British teenager Daniel Ray Shimell, survived a 75 foot fall from a hotel window while celebrating England’s victory over Colombia with his girlfriend and group of friends.
The, victim who has yet to be identified, was found lying outside the four-star hotel by a kebab shop worker, who called for an ambulance.
Sources said he was “serious but conscious” when he was taken to Son Espases Hospital in Majorca.
It is thought the unnamed football fan fell from a corridor window at around 1.30am - hours after match had finished. More than a thousand British holidaymakers had packed into bars in the party resort’s main strip Punta Ballena near the hotel to watch the nail-biting finale.
No one from the hospital was available for comment, but his girlfriend and other friends reportedly followed the ambulance in taxis. Civil Guard investigators have now begun a routine investigation in a bid to rule out foul play.
Two Britons have already died in falls in Magalluf this year.
On 3 June Welshman Tom Hughes, 20, died at an apartment block in Magalluf, which he is thought to have mistaken for his hotel.
And in April, Scottish bar worker Natalie Cormack died at the same apartment block after trying to edge her way along an overhang around a locked entrance door after she discovered she did not have keys.
She plunged the equivalent of seven floors.
A glass panel has since been erected at the spot where she died.
Yesterday, The Palmanova and Magalluf Hoteliers Association says that there has not been any “balconing” in the resorts for six years. What the association means is that there have not been any instances of deliberate diving from balconies for the past six years. This was the origin of the term balconing, and it was used to refer to the practice of diving from balconies into pools, occasionally with fatal results if people diving missed the water or hit their heads on the bottom of the pool.
The most recent cases of fatalities caused by falls from balconies are accidental, although there has been a suicide.
The 18-year-old French citizen who died on Monday is believed to have committed suicide.
The president of the association, Sebastià Darder, attributes the elimination of balconing to warnings given by the British Embassy, tour operators and Calvia town hall.
