© Europics
03. 10. 12. - 12:58
Mayor almost dies after graveyard accident
Austrian Burgermeister Johann Quehenberger ended up in intensive care during a harvest Thanksgiving festival when a gravestone in a local cemetery fell on him at Abtenau in Tennengau in the Salzburg province.
The village Burgermeister, aged 61, was walking home at the end of the festivities when he leaned against a gravestone that then toppled onto him – sending him falling against a second gravestone that then crushed him to the ground.
It took three men to lift the gravestone off and the badly injured man who was still conscious when he was put into the ambulance ended up in intensive care at a hospital in nearby Salzburg.
Local priest Bernhard Roeck said: "We do regularly check the gravestones to make sure none of them are loose and if we find a problem we let the relatives know. But it is also up to those who own graves to check the gravestones. There is never a 100 per cent safe solution."
Hospital spokeswoman Beate Erfurth said that the Mayor had some broken bones but he was now expected to make a full recovery.
