Nine days before Ohio State University student Henry Meacock plunged to his death from the third-floor balcony of a Puerto Vallarta hotel, another American spring breaker survived the same fall.
Carter Howell, a 20-year-old Georgia University student, told the Post he fell from the Melia hotel on March 6, less than two weeks before Meacock died on March 15.
Howell said that he has no memory of the fall — during which he hit a second-floor balcony on his way down. He said he suffered three minor fractures in his spine, a cracked wrist, a dislocated elbow, and post-traumatic amnesia.
He said that a friend was staying at the hotel with him, but also doesn’t know how he ended up toppling from the hotel balcony.
“It feels like a fever dream,” Howell said. “I was in the air then I was in the hospital looking over at my arm like ‘holy sh-t.'”
Howell said there were nearly 4 inches of bone sticking out of his elbow after the fall. He’s undergone several surgeries.
He said he was shocked to learn that another student died from the same drop.
“It’s crazy to me that a week after I fell another kid fell from what sounds like very similar circumstances,” he said.
“I just feel awful for that kid and his family,” Howell added.
Meacock’s family has not yet spoken publicly since the 19-year-old’s tragic death.
The teen had been trying to jump from one balcony to another when he fell to his death, the Jalisco state attorney general and medical examiner said.
Numerous social media postings from residents of Westfield, N.J. — Meacock’s hometown — said that he had to try to help retrieve an ID or phone another hotel guest dropped when he fell through a shattered plexiglass platform.
“At the hotel, a girl a room above his dropped her ID and it landed on plexiglass between the balconies,” one wrote on Facebook.
“He tried to get it for her, stepped on the plexiglass and it gave way and he fell.”
The Melia Hotel did not respond to requests for comment.
