Chinese Deadbeat Gambler Tossed From Eleventh Story Window Survives

Posted on: October 13, 2013, 05:30h. 

Last updated on: October 26, 2021, 06:13h.

Casino.org Staff Writer Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming.

Rather than hitting the roof after racking up a £6,000 ($9,600) debt, one man from China was basically thrown from one instead.

During a recent trip to the big city, Guo Xu, aged 35, visited the card room at his hotel to play cards and a game of chess, but was later persuaded to take part in the popular game mahjong, which didn’t go quite as well as he had hoped.

Big Debt, No Money

Despite being regarded as a good player in his home village in the central Henan province, he was no match for the city players, and instead of realizing his dreams of winning big, he rather quickly racked up a gambling debt of £6,000 which he simply couldn’t pay back.

As a result, the disgruntled gamblers grabbed Guo Xu and tossed the gambler from an eleventh story window, where he plummeted the distance of eight floors until reaching an air vent and chimney on the third floor. Obviously picking up some speed on his way down, he hit the obstacles with a bone-shattering force.

However, rather miraculously, Guo Xu survived the fall, but he had become wedged tightly into the chimney space and had to be cut free by emergency services, after which he was carefully lowered down to the ground from the third floor chimney in a stretcher, as paramedics tried desperately not to cause any further injury during the timely operation which covered several painstaking hours.

Possible Amputation

Emergency services at the incident said that Guo Xu appeared to be paralyzed from the waist down following his terrifying fall, and doctors have said that he may have to have both of his legs amputated as a result of the incident, since he suffered such a large loss of blood while stuck in the chimney.

Guo Xu later told police that he and his family had come from their home in the central Chinese province to the provincial capital of Zhengzhou for a family vacation, and that his wife had taken their five-year-old son to see the sights at the local zoo.

“Our lives have been ruined by this,” Xu’s wife told reporters. “He is the money earner for our family, we have no savings for medical bills and nothing to pay our bills, how will I look after him without money?”

This old-school method of dealing with deadbeat gamblers was once the norm in casino meccas like Las Vegas, of course. In the days when the mob basically ran Sin City – an era that lasted from its inception during the 1930s building of the Hoover Dam all the way into the 1970s and beyond, when the FBI seriously moved in on the Cosa Nostra’s activities, turning the city eventually into a corporate-run casino mecca instead – broken knee caps, knuckles and the worst fate – ending up a missing person being eaten by coyotes in the desert – were not entirely uncommon for gamblers who came up short of cash.