North Bay teen recovering after 100-foot fall from redwood tree

MARIN, Calif (KTVU) - A North Bay teen is on the mend following a frightful fall from more than 100 feet.
 
Thirteen-year-old Langston Alexander is named after a famous poet, but fashions himself an adventurer.
 
“I decided I wanted to make a platform in my tree, so I could look around. Because it’s a big tree. And then I could look around my neighborhood, and it’d be kool,” he said, sitting in his backyard with his family.
 
His plan took a fateful turn in mid-May when he wrote his teacher during homeschooling seeking to substitute a climb for gym activities and to complete work on the elevated platform. Despite orders from his dad against climbing to the top, Langston made several treks. His older sister recorded one assent, 105-feet up the California Redwood in his Marin County backyard.
 
“I was saying like, oh my goodness he’s going so high. What is my brother doing?" said Sophia Alexander.
 
The mission went wrong when Langston stepped onto a limb, and it gave way. Gravity got hold of him.
 
“The branch snapped at my feet, both of them, and so I fell down. And I tried to grab one of the branches but I couldn’t,” said Langston. 

His dad, Sheldon Alexander, said he was upstairs in the middle of a Zoom meeting when he heard the crash. 

He said, '"I’m thinking, 'I hope that’s not Langston.' All of a sudden my daughter was screaming and I’m like, 'that’s Langston.” And Langston’s mother, Tiffany said, “Literally like blood and it was not pretty at all Jesse. It was very, very, very, extreme.”
 
Emergency personnel flew Langston to Oakland’s Children’s Hospital with a litany of injuries. He had a separated sternum, two broken ribs, and lacerations and injures to his ear and internal organs. His family credits his healing to prayer from all corners of the globe.
 
“We have a lot of friends who were praying not only in the state but throughout the country and the world for Langston to feel better,” said Sheldon
 
Whether a divine act or the supernatural healing powers of a 13-year-old, Langston came home from the hospital this week.
 
“I get easily tired from walking and in the morning it’s hard to get up but other than that I’m pretty good,” he said.
 
His parents are elated a fall from such an elevation wasn’t fatal and didn’t cause paralysis, and that their family portrait is intact.
 
“This could have turned out very different. And to just be sitting around the table having dinner is gratitude enough,” said Tiffany.