A teenager has issued a warning to others about the dangers of social media attention, after he nearly fell to his death in the pursuit of the perfect selfie.
18-Year-old Triston Bailey was rushed to Methodist Dallas Medical Center in Dallas, Texas after taking some serious damage. According to the hospital, he'd fallen from the Margaret McDermott Bridge, and all of it was in aid of taking the perfect selfie.
"I could have easily passed away that night," said Bailey to local news station KTVT. "Easily could have been gone, if it was just one more rotation [in the air], I would not be here."
The last thing the teenager remembers is stopping at the bridge on the way home from a hockey game featuring local team the Dallas Stars. He'd been driving back with his friends on November 12 of last year, when they stopped to take a selfie over Interstate 30.
"I was going over the concrete barrier and they heard me exclaim, and they thought I was joking, that I was just trying to mess with them," said Bailey, recalling the moment when he fell over the bridge. "They looked over. Just like the movies, I'm just laid out there on the dirt."
Bailey fell 50 feet onto cold, hard concrete, and was rushed to the hospital. There, doctors discovered a broken pelvis, fractured ribs and other internal injuries, but trauma surgeon Dr. Edgar Araiza says it's a miracle he's still alive.
"He was the perfect specimen to survive that injury. There are a lot of people who wouldn't have been able to. We have people that fall from 10 feet and never leave the hospital, so for this young man to fall from 50 feet in the middle of the night into God knows what, and to emerge with his injuries is truly miraculous."
What's more, fellow surgeon Dr. J Darryl Amos reveals that Bailey could very easily have lived the rest of his life as a paraplegic.
"It’s amazing that he didn’t snap his neck. It’s amazing that he’s not a paraplegic – or broke his neck," remarked the Methodist Health System's Chief of Trauma, but Bailey has already begun to walk again after spending four months in a wheelchair. He's expected to make a full recovery.
"I broke my pelvis, I had a rib fracture, a punctured lung, I broke my face a whole bunch and I had lacerations on my spleen," revealed Bailey, adding that he hopes his horrific injuries will help to deter social media addicts from putting their lives at risk for the perfect selfie.
Methodist Dallas Medical Center, the hospital which treated Bailey, posted photos of the young man in order to further emphasise this point. "Triston nearly died--all for a selfie," they began in their post on Facebook. CNN reported that between the years of 2011 and 2018, at least 250 people across the world died in pursuit of the perfect selfie.
Triston Bailey, for sure, is one of the fortunate ones.
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