Professional football season has kicked off for the 2019-2020 season, but there was an unfortunate incident during the tailgate for the Browns home opener in Cleveland on September 8. A man by the name of Andy Shepherd was waiting for the game to begin at the Municipal Lot by the stadium when he suffered a seizure and took a dangerous fall that was caught on live TV due to a local news broadcast. Shepherd was standing on top of a van prior to the incident. Take a look!
Note: if you'd rather not see the incident, you can skip below the video for details about what happened.
40-year-old Andy Shepherd is a Browns fan who climbed on top of a van to take pictures ahead of the opener, but suffered a seizure while in that position and fell. Cleveland 19 News anchor Glenn Forbes took to Twitter after the video began to circulate on social media to give an update on what was happening. After falling, Shepherd was "sitting up and responsive," with an injury to the side of his head being treated by EMS, with an ambulance waiting. He was taken to the hospital.
The story went viral after the video began to spread on social media, and son Ashton Shepherd set out to clarify what happened. Unfortunately, 17-year-old Ashton began to see "jokes and memes" about his father, assuming that he was drunk when he fell when Andrew Shepherd has actually been diagnosed with epilepsy since he was 18-years-old.
Ashton Shepherd shared more details on September 9, when he set up a GoFundMe for his dad's medical expenses. In the description of the fundraiser, Ashton explained that he and his mother got a call that his diehard fan of a dad fell from the van after having a seizure while taking pictures. He went on to say this:
[A]t this point he had been seizure free for 10 months and on medication and he fell off and it caused a break in his shoulder, 6 ribs are broken and a fractured skull with a blood clot formed.. unfortunately it was caught on live TV and the jokes and assumptions have made almost everything worse..
Ashton Shepherd went on to explain that his dad "has to have" surgeries after his fall. At the time of writing, the GoFundMe had already surpassed the goal of $7,500 with $8,397 from 384 donors. Although the family apparently received some negative attention and accusations on social media following Andrew Shepherd's fall, the GoFundMe was shared more than a thousand times, with 381 followers at this point.
Young Ashton Shepherd is one of three kids. We can only hope that Andrew Shepherd gets the help he needs and recovers swiftly. Seizures can be quite serious, and some people with epilepsy are triggered by movies and many other factors, and there's not always a doctor handy to help.
