Impaling death of teen called ‘accident’

LUBBOCK, Texas — A woman who was with a group of children playing a latenight game of hide-andseek when a Texas teen impaled himself on the horn of a bull statue says she isn’t exactly sure how it happened but that the boy’s death was a “pure accident.”

Marenda Podhorksy is a mother of four who was one of two adults nearby when 14-year-old Miguel Martinez impaled himself on the statue’s horn as he played in a park near the National Ranching Heritage Center on the Texas Tech University campus in Lubbock.

She said she’s not sure if the boy slipped, tripped or was trying to hurdle the horn.

“There are a hundred scenarios that could have happened,” said Podhorksy, whose son Jeremy Warren was friends with Martinez. The teenager was spending the night with Warren and the boys and some other children were awake well past midnight after eating sweets to celebrate her boyfriend’s birthday.

There is gravel around the statue and light fixtures surround it, so the teen could have slipped on the gravel, tripped on a light fixture or been trying to jump the horn as Warren had done a short time before the accident, the woman said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have been out that late,” she said. “It was pure accident. We’d been playing for like an hour.”

When Podhorsky heard a thump, she thought Martinez might have been knocked down by the bull’s horn during a game of hide-and-seek. Instead, the boy suffered a chest wound.

University police are investigating.