LOGAN – A Hawking County coroner has identified a man who died at Concles Hall Hall in southeastern Ohio on Sunday as Lima resident Willard Gay.
Stacy Sams, coroner and chief coroner’s office investigator, said Gay was walking on the top edge trail in Conkles Hollow, a popular open area in the Hawking Hills region, when he fell about 80 feet to death.
Sams said 45-year-old Gay was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency responders at 3:37 p.m. Sunday.
He reportedly walked the trail with the others and watched the waterfall from the observation deck. Sams said Gay dropped the personal item and left the designated path to get it. According to witnesses, he leaned over, lost his balance and fell about 80 feet to his death, the coroner said.
Sams said she went down into the gorge to pick up Gay’s body.
“It’s unfortunate, but it happens almost every year,” she said of tourists injured or killed in hiking missions in the Hawking Hills area. “Probably we have an average of two or three a year.”
Gay’s body was sent to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office for autopsy.
https://www.limaohio.com/news/508861/lima-man-falls-to-his-death-near-hocking-hills-state-park
