Ohio Woman Dies after Fall from Rock Wall in Smoky Mountains

A family trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has resulted in tragedy after a woman died as a result of a fall from a rock wall at the Newfound Gap parking lot.

According to park spokesperson Dana Soehn, Swain County 911 notified Great Smoky Mountains National Park Rangers of a medical emergency at the Newfound Gap parking lot near the North Carolina/Tennessee state line at about 1:55 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 12, 2016.

Park Rangers and Cherokee Tribal EMS responded to the scene and found 85-year-old Marguerite Root, of Canal Winchester, Ohio, unconscious after a fall. Root had been sitting on a parking lot guard wall while her family were taking pictures with a view of the mountains in the background. She fell backwards off the rock wall to the stone walkway eight to nine feet below.

She never regained consciousness and was transported to the Cherokee Tribal Hospital in Cherokee, N.C. where she was pronounced dead.

Photo: Billy Hathorn (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons