A groom-to-be was left in a coma after a horror 20ft fall during his stag do.
Dan Bevis flew out to Puerto Del Carmen in Lanzarote for his stag do on May 1 but just two hours and three pints later disaster struck. The 25-year-old headed to the first bar of the trip to where his friend was sitting on a wall. The dad-of-one sat on the ‘really rusty’ wall and fell backwards, plummeting 20ft onto the pavement below.
Dan suffered such a traumatic brain injury his friend was left ‘holding his head together’ in a desperate bid to stop the bleeding until an ambulance rushed him to hospital. There he was put in a coma due to a brain bleed, fracture behind his ear, a broken collarbone and a broken sternum.
View 4 ImagesDan with his son Grayson Bevis-Elvins(Image: Kennedy News & Media)
Dan’s fiancé, Kirsty Elvins, 27, flew out with their son Grayson Bevis-Elvins, one, to be with Dan before he was able to fly home on May 19. Thankfully his travel insurance have covered his medical expenses.
Currently off work and recovering at home, Dan’s family have set up a GoFundMe to help cover bills ahead of their wedding in July.
Kirsty, from Alcester, Warwickshire, said: “I literally screamed when I found out. They had quite a late flight, checked into the hotel, dropped all their stuff off in Lanzarote and they’d only been out in the first bar for a couple of hours because they landed late. One of his friends who was on the stag do was sitting on the wall so he went and checked on him.
View 4 ImagesThe groom-to-be was just a few hours into his holiday
“You can’t smoke directly outside the bar so he went across a small road to where the wall was, went to sit on the wall but the rail that was there was really rusty and not secure. As he’d gone to sit on this wall he’d gone straight backwards and fell nearly 20ft off a wall.
“There were three ambulances that turned up and the police attended. By this point he was unconscious and had a lot of blood pouring out of his head so one of his friends was holding his head together to try and stop the bleeding.
“The paramedics there didn’t tell any of the others if he was alive or not. The first thing you think is ‘I need to get a flight there’ but by this point he wasn’t stable so if we sat on that plane for four-and-a-half hours we wouldn’t know what was going on.”
View 4 ImagesDan Bevis with Kirsty Elvins(Image: Kennedy News & Media)
As Dan had a Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC), it will cover his medical expenses. Healthcare assistant Kirsty said: “A lot of people presumed just because he was on his stag do, ‘I bet he was really drunk’. If the travel insurance thought that, they wouldn’t be trying to help us with the claim. He’d only had a couple of beers, it happened at the first bar they went to. It was very touch and go.
“My advice would be to make sure everyone’s got their GHIC card, travel insurance is such a big thing. It hits you so close to home, they say you really don’t know what’s around the corner and you don’t.”
Just weeks away from their dream wedding, Kirsty is hopeful Dan will have recovered enough to walk down the aisle with her, she said: “We’ve paid 75% of everything we need to pay for but now it’s all the final payments, a lot of what we had put aside we had to use to prioritise getting Dan sorted out.
“Luckily the medical expenses are covered but obviously we still had to pay for quite a lot while we were there. He’s not going to be able to go back to work for at least four to six weeks.”
“When Dan got checked over they said he can walk short distances but that he’s going to need to be in a wheelchair to get around because every time he walks he can go really dizzy. I was just hoping he would go and have the best time and then obviously he’s suffered a really bad accident. This is a freak accident that has happened and you just never have any idea that this could happen.”
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You can donate to Dan’s GoFundMe here.