PANAMA CITY BEACH — A 13-year-old boy from Indiana is dead after falling from a condominium balcony Saturday morning.
The boy was checking out of the Palazzo Condominiums on the 17000 block of Front Beach Road with his mother and grandmother when he realized he’d left his phone in their room on the 15th floor, Panama City Beach Police Chief Drew Whitman said.
The boy, whose name will not be released until police can notify his father, went back up to the room with his grandmother just after 10 a.m. to look for the phone. After a few minutes the grandmother called for the boy from another room, and he didn’t respond, Whitman said.
He’d fallen 15 stories to the pool deck below.
“We heard a clanking, like glass or metal, and then we heard a thud,” said Rachel Salyer, who is vacationing from Kentucky with her husband and was on the beach below the condominium’s elevated pool deck.
Salyer looked up and saw the boy at the edge of the pool deck. Soon she heard sirens.
Police investigators later were on the balcony, the pool deck and the sand below.
Whitman said all early indicators point to the fall being accidental. The Medical Examiner’s Office will conduct an autopsy, Whitman said.
It was the second deadly balcony fall on Panama City Beach in as many months. On March 19, 62-year-old Thomas Sanders of Dallas fell 12 stories from a balcony at the Holiday Inn Resort.