FIRST PARKOUR RELATED DEATH (possibly)

[b2c]

got this from SFPK, apparently a young man who tried parkour for a bit in sacromental with SACPK, somehow fell off of a 8-stories building, exact circumstances are unknown, but investigators blame parkour and "reckless behavior.

here is the link to the full report, even a video:

http://www.kcra.com/news/21503335/detail.html

this is disturbing stuff, very real, too real in fact.

[b2c]

yeah, its not sure if the death was directly due to practicing Parkour, but the thing the investigation does know, is that Kenny WAS someone who had partaken and was interested in parkour. the circumstances in which he was found, which was after falling off several stories. there was no idication of faul play, so the easiest conclusion to make was that the person was doing something reckless that lead to a accidental fall.

doesn't quite add up tho, the news report described Kenny as a very intelligent kid, and the SacPK guys described him as shy and not reckless.

either it was an accident due to practicing PK at a dangerous height, or he was up there for another reason and somehow fell.

maybe after the full investigation they will know the actual cause.

[X5452]

That's insane. The only way this kid could've died is because he was trying to do something extreme on that eight-story roof. If he was firmly on the ground, doing vaults, I don't think he would've died.

He should've been more careful and knew his limits. True, we should blame the competition and commercialization to some extent, but the decision ultimately lies with the individual. Parkour should never be blamed for someone's death. It's stupidity that kills people, not the sport itself.

[Iliketovaultthings]

I completely agree. I dont see how you can fall off that lot without doing something of the side of the structure. Either somebody really did kill him or we was just being plain stupid. Honstley, they toss the word "parkour" around again and i dont like it. I dont like the way its commercialized, and i dont like how people give it such a bad name. It just has to be put out there like some sort of new trend and just one incident like this gives all traceurs a bad name. It makes me sick. We call this thing parkour, the art of movement, and look what its starting to be turned into. It also makes young people in general look bad. It just takes a few idiots to condemn this art, even though no incident close to this can actually classified "Parkour's fault" at all. I just wish those of us who actually practice what we call parkour as a martial art will be positively recognised in the near future so that we may practice and learn without trouble from authorities or attention from the media.

[hillexallen]

Thank you!

[hillexallen]

Traceurs don't go and fall off of 8 story building for no reason.

Unless he committed suicide or just fell randomly, his recklessness could have been caused by a couple of things:

1. He may not have know his limits. I have heard many testimonies already that this was not the case, so I think it's not true.

2. He could have been stupid. This is also not true, the people who met him and his friend on the news said he was extremely intelligent.

3. He could have been pressured to do it by the media, a friend, or something else. Since there was nobody with him, I'm blaming it ont he media or somehting else for now. Have you ever seen a really awesome video then wanted to go out and do something really crazy and big? I think that's what happened to him.

It looks like he could have tried a turn vault on the stairs.

[Bay Area Parkour]

...we can echo President Obama's words, spoken on a much less local, but even more dramatic topic today:

"We don't know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts."... "What we do know is that there are families, friends and an entire [nation community] grieving right now..."

Assumptions and speculations on the individual case serve the noble intent of preventing further accidents poorly.

Maybe a new thread should be started gathering all the existing and new valid suggestions to prevent "recklessness" behaviors in general, when it comes to parkour beginners and more advanced traceurs...

[hillexallen]

Yes, we definitely don't know for sure if it was parkour-related yet.

[Beretta]

I originally posted this on PK Cali and Safe'n'Sure asked me to repost it here, so here you go:

I can say that the parkour community in Sacramento is tight knit, well organized and has several strong, experienced members. They are the kind of people that tend to read a lot of books on all kinds of things relating to parkour, from different types of conditioning to philosophy to ancient spiritual texts. In their ranks are people who flip, people who don't, people who do a lot of tricking, people who do none, a LOT of barefoot runners (a higher proportion there than anywhere I know of). Some of them train 5 days a week or more, all of them work hard and progress sensibly. When new people show up, they're welcomed and taught by the experienced traceurs, who have even done free one-on-one sessions for enthusiastic newcomers out of pure love for parkour. After jams they all hang out together and everyone's invited, eating, watching Dragon Ball Z or doing some extra conditioning or martial arts. They're willing to travel far and wide across Northern California to train.

I can not think of a community that better exemplifies the spirit of "true traceurs."

Kenny had plenty of good examples around him, he met them and trained with some of them. Kenny's first training session didn't consist of him jumping off crazy things... instead he came out and ran a charity 5K with us before ever training parkour at all. His closest friends in the parkour community describe him as shy, cautious and knowing his abilities.

Blaming what happened on recklessness, the media or anything else is just unfounded. This is a tragedy and a mystery. Establishing a cause will not lessen the tragedy at all.

I think any attempt to "clear" the name of parkour is very likely to backfire. Getting into arguments with grieving families over the social value or true character of a possible cause of death via the media is not only rude, but very bad PR.

To me the best thing we can do is proceed as we have:
-Consistently spread the message that parkour is safe as long as it is practiced safely.
-Experienced community members make themselves available to new people at organized training sessions as well as more free form jams.
-Provide open communities online and in person that are welcoming and have a friendly culture.
-Emphasize the importance of conditioning.
-Live and love through movement, ever welcoming new brothers and sisters to the worldwide family that we are.
-Use our strength to help others.

I think there are plenty of opportunities for us to do these things and I don't feel it will benefit anyone if we attempt to respond to this tragedy in a way that unintentionally harms a grieving community.

[hillexallen]

Thanks! I agree with 99% of it.

"Establishing a cause will not lessen the tragedy at all." This is true, but it should be noted that establishing a cause WILL prevent future tragedy. While this was a terrible incident that we should definitely not turn it into a huge debate, it is important to identify what caused this accident (and what COULD cause other accidents) so we may be able to prevent such tragedies in the future. However, we will probably never know what caused this accident in particular. If we COULD establish a cause, it would be a good idea though.

"-Consistently spread the message that parkour is safe as long as it is practiced safely.
-Experienced community members make themselves available to new people at organized training sessions as well as more free form jams.
-Provide open communities online and in person that are welcoming and have a friendly culture.
-Emphasize the importance of conditioning.
-Live and love through movement, ever welcoming new brothers and sisters to the worldwide family that we are.
-Use our strength to help others."

YES. Great list. The reason I am against the competition in because it makes parkour less safe. As you said in number one, we should show people that parkour is safe when practiced safely. Since competition drastically increases the potential for injury, as proved by MTV's show, "practicing parkour safely" means, to me, not engaging in such events, and not trying to imitate people who are in such events. Safety is first, so
I don't think it's worth it to trade safety for money/growth of parkour/publicity.

I would never get the family involved in a debate about the cause of Kenny's death, nor would I blame the accident on Kenny. From what people are saying, it seems like he was a sensible, intelligent, young man.

This incedent may or may not have been parkour-related, we probably will never know for sure.
We do know, however, that competition increases the potential for accidents like this to happen because it leads to envy, copy-cat behavior, etc... I consider this an undebateable fact.

The page for beginners who saw the MTV show was good, I thought. Commercialization is not just going to end, so we need a way to "catch" the new ones who came becuase of the media, and show them what real parkour is.

We should definitely look at the Sacramento community as an example of a functional, "true" parkour community. I think we should all strive to be similar to them.

I think another key idea is having beginners make decisions for themsleves. Today, I see too many beginners relying on more experienced traceurs to tell them what they should learn next, what they are ready for, and so on. While I know it's valuable to have the guidance of a more experienced practitioner, I think it's a good idea for beginners to be taught how to teach themselves. I, for example, trained for about a month before seeing kaos, and I think that helped me. I taught myself how to kong, lazy, and do a few other things, and now it is easy for me to teach myself movements because I had that experience. Also, teaching oneself is good for developing one's own style, instead of becoming a copy of another tracuer. Remember, there is more than one right way to do things, and many of those right ways have not been discovered yet. More people teachig themselves will lead to more discoveries.

Bottom line, if we give beginners experience making decisions for thyemselves, they will be better equipped to make decisions when they really need to.

Anyway, great post. Too bad we can't agree on 100% of it. :)

[hillexallen]

I think I just wrote an essay...

[b2c]

Practice "Controlled Hazard" - expose yourself gradually to more risk, get used to danger, be prepared for when something goes wrong, because it always will.

when practicing any move, visualize a backup-plan in case you bail, one out of ten times you probably will.

[hillexallen]

Maybe YOU will bail one of ten times! :P