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Parents recall horror of girl's fall

Julia Grimes' dad thinks an oversize T-shirt caused her to trip and fall through a stairway spindle onto a tile floor.

By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN
Published January 19, 2006

	[Times photo: Brian Cassella]
	A gap between spindles supporting the Grimeses' staircase banister shows where one spindle broke away as 6-year-old Julia Grimes fell through it. She fell another 15 feet to land face-first on a ceramic floor. Her father thinks Julia tripped on the hem of an adult T-shirt she was wearing.
	Julia Grimes, left, has spoken a few sentences since regaining consciousness in the hospital, says her father, Jay Grimes.

NEW TAMPA - The parents of the 6-year-old girl who was seriously injured when she fell through a banister onto ceramic tile said Wednesday they do not blame the installer of the staircase, but rather a T-shirt the girl was wearing.

Jay and Katherine Grimes said their daughter, Julia, had just had a bath Monday night and was wearing one of her father's concert T-shirts.

They suspect she may have been running and tripped on the Bob Marley shirt, which hung past her feet. Her head hit one of the spindles, which popped from the bannister, and she fell through the foot-wide gap, 15 feet, head-first onto the tile floor below, Jay Grimes said.

"It looks to me she may have fallen into the spindle and it may have just popped out of the rails, but that's just me guessing it," Grimes said at a news conference Wednesday in Tampa.

Julia suffered skull fractures, broken bones and a collapsed lung. However, she said her first words since the fall on Tuesday, and was upgraded to fair condition Wednesday, the family said.

"She seems like she'll come through," Jay Grimes said outside Tampa General Hospital, where his daughter is recuperating. "It's going to be a while."

Grimes, an insurance manager, described that night with his voice breaking at times. He said he was in another part of the house working in his office, when he heard his wife's hysterical screams.

Grimes ran to the front of the house and saw his daughter lying on the tile in the foyer, just below the top of the staircase.

"There was blood everywhere; she wasn't breathing," he said. "It was a terrible fall."

Katherine Grimes was in the kitchen getting Julia a drink of water when she heard the 3-foot-long, white wooden spindle hit the floor.

She never heard her daughter. Julia never screamed.

She called 911 while her husband and another daughter, Mercedes, 12, tried to administer CPR.

Julia's jaw was locked, so Mercedes tried to pry her sister's mouth open, Jay Grimes said.

Grimes has not had CPR training. He said he moved on instinct.

It took paramedics 10 to 15 minutes to get to the family's home in the Heritage Oaks subdivision of Hunter's Green.

"It seemed like forever," Jay Grimes said. "I tried to make sure she was breathing. I thought I had lost her a couple of times."

Julia was taken to a fire station nearby and then flown to Tampa General, where she was first listed in critical condition. They feared she had both brain damage and spinal cord damage.

Her maternal grandmother flew in from Oklahoma. Her parents cried. Jay Grimes thought about the fish Julia had wanted on a trip to Wal-Mart but he wouldn't buy for her.

"(It) was terrible," he said. "It was really tough."

Tuesday evening, she gave her parents reason to smile for the first time in almost 24 hours when she awoke and said she needed to go to the bathroom.

"It was the best," Grimes said. "We were very relieved."

She has since said two more sentences - "Let me lay down" and "Leave me alone" - but little else. She just wants to sleep, her father said.

"She's kind of angry, but she has an attitude anyway," Grimes said, chuckling. "She doesn't like having so many people in her face all the time, and all the tubes."

Her prognosis is good, but it will take time, he said.

The Grimeses credited paramedics, firefighters, the flight crew and the hospital for saving their daughter's life.

Grimes said he tugged all the other spindles along the stairs and they seem intact.

Katherine Grimes said she wants to have the rest of the spindles nailed into place.

"My carpenter will be getting a call from me next week," she said.

Jay Grimes, meanwhile, has to make a trip to Wal-Mart.

He has a fish to buy.

[Last modified January 19, 2006, 01:48:21]