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Boy, 13, falls from observation level on Gettysburg monument

Authorities say a 13-year-old boy from Indiana was flown to a hospital after plummeting about 40 feet from a monument at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania's Gettysburg National Military Park has been on the Civil War Preservation Trust's list of the top 10 endangered sites for eight of the last nine years.
Pennsylvania's Gettysburg National Military Park has been on the Civil War Preservation Trust's list of the top 10 endangered sites for eight of the last nine years.Read moreTOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer
    by Associated Press, The Associated Press
    Published 

GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Authorities say a 13-year-old boy from Indiana was flown to a hospital after plummeting about 40 feet from a monument at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.

Acting park information officer Jason Martz says the Fort Wayne youth was visiting the park on a school field trip when he fell from the Pennsylvania Memorial at about 9 a.m. Friday.

Martz said the top of the monument has an observation level, and the boy fell from there despite a 3- to 4-foot-high safety wall.

Martz said the youth was flown to Hershey Medical Center with what officials believe were broken bones and internal injuries.

The park has opened an internal investigation. The 100-foot Pennsylvania Memorial, the park’s largest monument, is in the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge.