Haylee Hoefgen, 19, a pre-med student at the University of Kansas, was having a great time on the beach in South Padre, Texas, when she got the bright idea to climb a flagpole.
It was a spring break stunt that went terribly wrong.
Haylee Hoefgen, 19, a pre-med student at the University of Kansas, was having a great time on the beach in South Padre, Texas, when she got the bright idea to climb a flagpole.
"I had seen these other girls trying to climb it and they weren't making it very far — like 5 feet off the ground," Hoefgen told Inside Edition.
She knew she could do better. "And of course I'm so competitive and I'm like, 'I can make it farther, I know I can' and my friends are such enablers they're like, 'Yeah, you should do it!'"
Hoefgen did make it much farther up the pole — to her own detriment, unfortunately. As she neared the top, video shows how the pole came crashing down, with Hoefgen clinging on for dear life.
"I felt the pole kind of turn a little and my body went to that side and there was one second where I knew, 'I'm gonna fall. I'm definitely gonna fall,'" she recalled.
Luckily, she only received minor injuries.
"I tore a couple ligaments in my foot," she said. "So I'm in a brace for that but other than that walked away with bumps and bruises."
Asked if she had been drinking — as many have wondered — Hoefgen was coy.
"I can't answer that."
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