Pitt receiver seriously hurt in freak fall

[The_Philster]

A University of Pittsburgh football player was critically injured yesterday after accidentally falling through a church ceiling and landing on a pew, police said.

Billy Gaines, a sophomore who plays wide receiver for the Panthers, was attending a cookout at St. Anne convent in Homestead, Pa., when the accident occurred around 2:30 p.m.

"For some unknown reason Gaines crawled up, climbed up to the crawl space above the ceiling of the church. There's a small plank you walk across [and] he either slipped or had a misstep," Allegheny County police assistant superintendent Jim Morton said....more (http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/sports/6121099.htm)

[The_Philster]

University of Pittsburgh wide receiver Billy Gaines had consumed enough alcohol that he was more than 1 ½ times over the legal limit for an adult to drive when he fell from a catwalk in a church last week and died, authorities said yesterday.

Gaines, 19, fell 25 feet through the rafters and struck the back of his head on a pew at a church outside Pittsburgh on Wednesday. He died later the same day of a fractured skull and spinal injuries.

Allegheny County police are conducting an investigation to determine what led Gaines into the upper reaches of St. Anne church in Homestead at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday and whether charges should be filed in his death....

more (http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/sports/6156318.htm)