PROVO — A 17-month-old Provo girl remained in fair condition Monday, two days after she fell through a railing and down two floors to a concrete landing inside the Harris Fine Arts Center at Brigham Young University.
"She's stable, but what stable is I don't know," the girl's father, John Stapleton, told the Deseret Morning News. "She hasn't given us enough signals to say much. She's more asleep than she is awake."
According to BYU Police Lt. Greg Barber, Clara Stapleton and her parents were at the fine arts center Saturday to attend a piano competition involving another child in the family when the toddler walked to a railing on the fourth floor.
As she went to sit on a horizontal bar, the girl fell backward through two vertical bars, plunging down to a concrete landing on the second floor.
Campus police responded to a call from the ticket office at about 2:15 p.m. and found Clara unconscious but moving.
"She would cry out but never fully regained consciousness," Barber said.
Provo paramedics stabilized Clara and transported her to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. From there, she was flown to Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City.
A spokesman for the hospital said Monday that Clara had been upgraded to fair condition. The girl's father, however, said that she remained in "serious condition," though she had been transferred out of intensive care. He said doctors are still busy conducting tests to determine if the girl suffered brain damage from her fall.
"The prognosis looks good, but nothing is for sure," said Stapleton, who spent Monday taking care of his three other children while his wife kept a vigil at Clara's bedside in Salt Lake City.
Meanwhile, officials from BYU's department of risk management are busy assessing the railing's safety. BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said the area had not been cordoned off.
The fine arts center, which houses several theaters as well as classrooms, offices and a studio for KBYU-Television, has an open area for art displays on the second floor for viewing from the third and fourth floors. The girl fell at the south end of the building.
"It appears to be just a very tragic accident," said Barber, who said it was the first fall of its kind at the HFAC in his 30 years at BYU. "Our safety department's been notified. They're looking at the scene to see what measures can be taken. Our heart goes out to the family."
Jenkins also expressed condolences to the family and pledged that "the university is looking at the situation to determine how this might have happened."
For now, Stapleton said he has no plans on suing the university for the accident. He said he is just worried about Clara's recovery.
"We don't know what lies ahead," he said. "We don't know if this is going to be three or four weeks in the hospital, or three or four months, or if she's damaged for life."
E-MAIL: twalch@desnews.com; lwarner@desnews.com