Police charge man with buying beer for underage Pirates fan who fell onto field

Authorities Tuesday charged a Mon Valley man with buying beer in April at PNC Park for his 20-year-old friend, Kavan Markwood, who was celebrating a rally by the Pittsburgh Pirates when he fell 21 feet onto the field’s warning track below and suffered severe injuries.

Ethan Kirkwood, 21, of Liberty was charged with two counts of selling or furnishing liquor to a minor. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 23.

Kirkwood’s attorney was not listed Tuesday in court records.

Video from the baseball stadium on Pittsburgh’s North Shore showed Kirkwood buying two 24-ounce cans of Miller Lite shortly before 7 p.m. April 30, according to a criminal complaint in the case by Pennsylvania State Police Liquor Control Enforcement.

Another video clip showed Kirkwood with a friend later identified as Markwood, the complaint said. Markwood was holding one of the cans of beer.

At 7:15 p.m., video from the ballpark shows the two men walking away from the bar area, each with a 24-ounce can, according to the complaint.

Kirkwood was walking downstairs to a bar at 8:09 p.m., around the time Markwood celebrated a Pirates comeback effort by ripping off his shirt and pouring beer on himself.

When Andrew McCutchen doubled in the seventh inning, driving home the go-ahead runs in a 4-3 win, Markwood fell over a low railing and tumbled over the Clemente Wall onto the field below.

Markwood drank two beers that night, Markwood’s girlfriend, Alonna Brown, told police, according to the complaint.

On May 7, Markwood, then being treated at Allegheny General Hospital, told a TribLive reporter that he suffered “broken everything” from the fall, including back and neck injuries and a swollen hand.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I can’t really sleep. I have a lot of back pain.”

Doctors said Markwood suffered a brain injury along with injuries to his spine, ribs and lungs in the fall.

A South Allegheny graduate, Markwood played linebacker for the Walsh and Wheeling universities Division II college football teams.

New Castle-based attorney Dallas W. Hartman, who represents the Markwood family, did not return calls Tuesday seeking comment.

Kirkwood has had previous run-ins with authorities regarding alcohol, court records show.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania police charged Kirkwood with purchasing alcohol for a minor and public drunkenness following an October 2022 incident, court records show.

He pleaded guilty to the IUP case Jan. 24, 2023, and paid $214 in fines, court records show.

A week after that plea, Kirkwood was charged with purchasing alcohol for a minor and public drunkenness by Slippery Rock University police, court records show. He pleaded guilty to those two charges and paid $865 in fines.

A man who answered a phone call Tuesday on a phone listed as Kirkwood’s hung up on a TribLive reporter.