Storm tosses surfer into restaurant

KITE surfer Kevin Kearney had just come ashore for safety reasons when a blast of wind, spun off by Tropical Storm Fay, landed the 28-year-old in a Fort Lauderdale hospital and put him on computer and television screens around the world.

Kearney remained in critical condition yesterday at Broward General Hospital, where he was surrounded by his mother and friends.

Shortly before 5pm on Monday a sudden gust caught Kearney’s parachute-like kite and tossed him at astonishing speed more than 100 feet across a road, before he slammed into the wall of a beachside restaurant.

The video — captured by CBS4 photographer Yuseith Osorio and quickly posted on YouTube — shows Kearney plunge about 15 feet downward, smacking hard into the sand. Then he is jerked off the ground like a rag doll and flung horizontally across by the parachute.

The harrowing flight ends with Kearney crashing into the side of the Oasis Restaurant, where he is quickly tended by lifeguard-paramedics.

Kearney and several other kite surfers had been hundreds of yards offshore, trying to take advantage of the winds spawned by Fay, when weather conditions worsened and they decided to quit for the day, said Fort Lauderdale fire rescue lieutenant Gio Serrano.

Kearney was preparing to take off his equipment when the wind kicked up.

Alicia Paradise-Garza said her son is a 2003 graduate of Penn State and was recently laid off from his information-technology job.

“He has been teaching kite surfing down in the Keys and doing a lot of kite surfing with his friends while looking for a job,” she said.