Holiday Brit, 27, dies when stunt to show friends how long he could hold on to balcony goes wrong

By Gerrard Couzens
Last updated at 5:32 PM on 6th September 2010

A British holidaymaker has died after a drunken prank at his Majorca hotel went horribly wrong.

The 27-year-old plunged more than 30 feet after losing his grip as he hung off his fifth-floor balcony and asked friends to count how long he could hold on for.

The dead man had just got back from a boozy night out with four holiday pals in the party resort of Magaluf when he attempted the stunt.

He was today named as Kevin Anthony Arie Hubert Louis, from Blackburn, Lancashire.

An onlooker said: 'It all happened so quickly. He clambered over his balcony and only held on for a few seconds before he dropped.

'He fell head-first like a lead weight and smashed on to a concrete ramp leading down to an underground car park next to his hotel garden.
'His friends saw everything.

'They were in tears when ambulance workers told them their friend was gone.'

A police source added: 'The friends told us he wanted to show off and hung off his balcony to see how long he could hold on for.

'He fell before they could talk him out of it.

'They had been drinking most of the night but they sobered up pretty quickly with the shock.'

The group of five men only returned to their holiday apartment near Magaluf ten minutes before Sunday morning’s tragedy, which happened around 7.40am.

Pathologists were due to conduct a post-mortem today in the Majorcan capital Palma.

The dead man is the second Brit to die this summer in a fall from a Magaluf hotel.

A string of other Brit tourists have been injured in similar circumstances in Majorca and the neighbouring island of Ibiza.

Grace Ford, 17, from Greenhalgh near Kirkham, Lancs, died after five days in hospital on July 25.

She fell 90ft after trying to sneak into her hotel with an 18-year-old British boy she met the night of her accident and plunging down a shaft she thought led to the hotel’s stairwell.

Ryan Elley, 20, from Portsmouth, Hampshire, has been in an induced coma in hospital in Majorca for a month after falling from his hotel in neighbouring Ibiza.

He made a last-minute decision to join his friends on holiday and did not take out travel insurance.

Friends and wellwishers have raised £15,000 to fly him back home by air ambulance when he is well enough.

Many of the hotel falls involving foreign holidaymakers in Spain this summer have been blamed on a craze dubbed balconing, where holidaymakers try to leap between rooms or jump from their room into their swimming pool.

Hotel owners in the Balearic Islands are set to discuss measures including fines, repatriations and a hard-hitting video campaign to stop youngsters attempting the dangerous stunts.

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1309475/Brit-27-plunges-30ft-death-balcony-stunt-Magaluf-goes-wrong.html