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Toddler Survives 90-Foot Oregon Cliff Fall That Killed His Mother

'His foot wiggled on a rock and he started to go down. She just did what she instinctively thought to do and that was go after him.'
Image: Stephanie A. Cohen and her son Oliver
Stephanie A. Cohen and her son Oliver in a photo taken the day of the fall.Lisa Schroeder / via KGW

A toddler survived tumbling off of a cliff during a family day hike in Oregon on Sunday, though the boy’s mother, who also fell as much as 90 feet, did not, authorities said.

Multnomah County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Alexander said that 37-year-old Stephanie Cohen and her 3-year-old son had been hiking with several other family members on a trail approximately 35 miles east of Portland on Sunday afternoon.

Image: Stephanie A. Cohen and her son Oliver
Stephanie A. Cohen and her son Oliver in a photo taken the day of the fall.Lisa Schroeder / via KGW

As the family was returning, Cohen’s husband took their son, Oliver, off his shoulders and the boy wandered toward the trail’s edge, NBC affiliate KGW reported.

“His foot wiggled on a rock and he started to go down,” Cohen’s mother, Lisa Schroeder, told the station. “She just did what she instinctively thought to do and that was go after him.”

Both plummeted roughly 50 to 60 feet, Alexander said, then they tumbled another 20 to 30 feet down a slope.

Cohen was pronounced dead at the trailhead; Oliver was transferred to a local hospital with serious injuries, Alexander said.