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Owen Hart killed at WWF PPV
From The Canadian Press
Sunday, May 23, 1999KANSAS City, Missouri -- Canadian professional wrestler Owen Hart plunged to his death Sunday in a freak wrestling accident in front of thousands of people in the Kemper arena.
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The Calgary-born Hart was to be lowered to the ring on a wire and fell 18 metres, hitting his head on a turnbuckle at the start of a World Wrestling Federation match.
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"He was supposed to be lowered down into the ring," said Michelle Hindorff, a paramedic and dispatcher for the city ambulance service. "It didn't get hooked on to him. He thought it was hooked on."
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"I didn't see it, but from what I can gather, somebody slipped up," said his father Stu Hart, an old-time wrestler.
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"You don't get up 60 or 70 feet in the air without being properly anchored down," he said, adding that Owen had performed the stunt with the wire before.
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"He grew up wrestling, he had been doing it since he was a toddler.
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"He was born into the sport. He was a pretty damn good amateur wrestler, a Canadian college champion. He was also an excellent professional wrestler."
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The 33-year-old Hart, who went under the name of Blue Blazer, is the younger brother of Bret (The Hitman) Hart, a star with World Championship Wrestling.
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The crowd at first thought it was all a stunt then commentator Jim Ross repeated over and over to the audience that Hart's fall was not scripted.
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"We thought it was a doll at first," said 15-year-old Robert McCome. "We thought they were just playing with us. We were really shocked when we found out that it was no joke."
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The fall was not shown on the pay-per-view televised match. The TV audience was being shown a montage of Hart's clips when the accident occurred and the camera panned through the crowd while paramedics worked on Hart.
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The show stopped for 15 minutes then the remainder of the matches continued after he was taken away by paramedics.
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Shawn Gaitan, 24, who brought his seven-year-old nephew to the event, said: "I think it's really messed up that they kept on with the show. They could have at least told us what was going on. We worry just like the other people worry."
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Gaitan said he saw Owen flying through the air; his head hit a turnbuckle and snapped back.
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"We at the WWF are saddened by the tragic accident that occurred here tonight," Vince McMahon Sr., chairman of WWF, said at a news conference. "We don't have any answer as to why this happened. There is an ongoing investigation."
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He declined to comment further.
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Owen was the youngest of 12 children. He is survived by his wife Martha and two children.
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