Authorities on Tuesday charged a Mon Valley man with buying beer in April at PNC Park for his 20-year-old friend, Kavan Markwood, who later celebrated a player’s RBI double by dousing himself in alcohol before falling 21 feet onto the field’s warning track below and suffering severe injuries.
Ethan Kirkwood, 21, of Liberty, was charged with two counts of selling or furnishing liquor to a minor. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 23.
Kirkwood’s attorney was not listed Tuesday in court records.
Video from the baseball stadium on Pittsburgh’s North Shore showed Kirkwood buying two, 24-ounce cans of Miller Lite shortly before 7 p.m. on April 30, according to a criminal complaint in the case by Pennsylvania State Police Liquor Control Enforcement.
Another video clip showed Kirkwood with a friend later identified as Markwood, the complaint said. Markwood was holding one of the cans of beer.
At 7:15 p.m., the two men bought another round of beer, video from the ballpark shows, according to the complaint.
Kirkwood was walking downstairs to a bar at 8:09 p.m., around the time Markwood celebrated a hit by Pittsburgh Pirate Andrew McCutchen by ripping off his shirt, pouring beer on himself and then tumbling over the Clemente Wall onto the field below.
Markwood drank only two beers that night, Markwood’s girlfriend, Alonna Brown, told police, according to the complaint.
On May 7, Markwood, then being treated at Allegheny General Hospital, told a TribLive reporter that he suffered “broken everything” from the fall, including back and neck injuries and a swollen hand.
“I’m all right,” he said. “I can’t really sleep. I have a lot of back pain.”
Doctors said that Markwood suffered a brain injury along with injuries to his spine, ribs and lungs in the fall.
A South Allegheny graduate, Markwood played linebacker for the Walsh and Wheeling universities Division II college football teams.