Irishman's US park death revealed

A 21-year-old Irishman fell to his death while posing for a picture beside a waterfall in Yosemite National Park, it emerged tonight.

Shane Kinsella, from Dublin, was hiking with two friends in the Californian park when the accident happened at around 4pm on Monday evening.

A Yosemite Park spokesman said the young man had slipped while at the top of Upper Yosemite Falls, the seventh highest waterfall in the world.

“He was posing for photographs and he fell right off the top of the waterfall, straight down 1,430 feet. It was purely accidental and it’s just a horrible situation,” he said.

Mr Kinsella had reached Upper Yosemite Falls by hiking up a three and a half mile trail. His body was recovered by Yosemite National Park rangers and rescue personnel in a pool at the bottom of Upper Yosemite Fall the following morning.

His parents are to arrive in Yosemite National Park tonight to recover his body, while his two friends were driven to the airport yesterday by a park ranger.

“They’re flying home and as you can imagine they’re very upset,” said the park ranger.

Yosemite is one of the most famous national parks in the United States. The 760,000-acre site is renowned for its spectacular waterfalls, mountains and forests and attracted 3.2 million visitors last year.

Mr Kinella’s death is the second at Yosemite within a week and the fifth so far in the park this year.

Last week, Rachael Neil, 22, from Arizona, slipped while jumping from rock to rock about a quarter of a mile above the waterfall.

She was pulled down stream and underwater by the swift current. Her body has not been recovered and and the rescue efforts will resume when water levels in the Merced River recede.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was providing consular assistance to Mr Kinsella’s family through the Irish Embassy in San Francisco.