dramatic fall spawns dramatic footage › edmonton television news 2007 › television in edmonton › television

A near-tragic accident saw a local television station repeatedly air footage of speeding police cars escorting an ambulance carrying a severely injured boy.

The frequent airing of the footage challenged viewers to ponder what the story was really all about.

At about 6:00 p.m. on August 17th, 2007 seven-year-old Donovan Ponto, his brother and one other boy scaled the chain-link fence that surrounds the Delton Recreation Centre at 12325 88 Street.

Ponto slipped from the top of the 9 metre sloped roof and fell onto a concrete walkway. His two mates jumped the 3 metres from the lower end onto grass.

Sirens drew neighbour Ed Derenowski to the scene.

"Yeah, he was flat on the stretcher already when I come, like laying on the ground on the stretcher. And he was crying and that. I heard an ambulance driver say that [he] should be okay."

"That was quite a fall, yet he was moaning and crying a bit."

Derenowski said it was common for kids to climb the fence to get inside the community centre to retrieve errant soccer balls and basketballs kicked too high. However, he didn't know why these boys had climbed up onto the building.

A witness told the Edmonton Journal a police officer patrolling the area had earlier told the boys to come down.

An ambulance crew rushed the boy to the Stollery Children's Hospital at the University of Alberta.

And it was television footage of the resulting high-speed police ambulance escort that Global Edmonton used to dramatic and repeated effect.

A Global cameramen was in lucky position to capture a not uncommon but rarely caught on camera sight: six police cars and a patrol officer clearing the way for the ambulance en route to hospital.

Global made the most of their video, even later interviewing an Edmonton police spokesman to justify additional airings of the footage.

"In this type of situation when there isn't much else going on in that particular division, if other officers are available, they will be there to provide assistance, to stop traffic and make sure that the ambulance can get through intersections safely and that the patient can get to the hospital," the police spokesman explained.

At last report Ponto was listed in stable condition.

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