U.S. tourist falls into mine in Mexico, dies

16-year-old tried to leap over 10-wide opening

Mario Armas / AP

Sue Paterson, left; Christopher Crane, right, and an unidentified person, center, grieve in San Luis de la Paz, Mexico, Saturday, near an abandoned mine where Paterson's and Crane's son 16-year-old Taylor Crane fell to his death on Friday.

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updated 12:00 a.m. ET July 22, 2007

MEXICO CITY - A 16-year-old U.S. tourist fell 1,000 feet to his death at an abandoned mine in central Mexico, and rescue workers were trying to recover his body on Saturday.

Witnesses told police that Taylor Crane tried to jump over the 10-foot-wide shaft of the Cinco Senores mine in Guanajuato state and fell in Friday, said Jose Felix Velazquez, a spokesman for police in San Luis de la Paz, where the mine is located.

Felix Velazquez said about 40 searchers have been working on the recovery effort, which has been complicated because the mine is flooded with water that “has a lot of arsenic and lead, and that makes it hard to breath down there.”

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He said Crane was from Pennsylvania, but did not know his hometown.

Crane arrived from the nearby tourist haven of San Miguel de Allende with a group that was visiting abandoned mines and haciendas, Felix Velazquez said.