A 78-year-old man is recovering after a harrowing fall down an elevator shaft in the Bronx, the incident occurred at a residential building on Boynton Avenue in Soundview, according to officials.
Firefighters discovered the man unconscious atop an elevator car within the shaft on Sunday afternoon, and despite not knowing how he ended up in this precarious situation, they successfully executed a specialized rescue to extract him, as ABC7NY reported.
Earlier accounts detail that the man encountered the open shaft on the sixth floor and fell onto the elevator which was stationed just below on the fifth, following a 10-feet drop that the NYC Department of Buildings believes happened because the individual pulled at the door; the DOB has since mandated the landlord to make urgent repairs and issued a violation for failing to uphold the necessary maintenance standards for the elevator device, as stated by a PIX11 news release.
The victim, whose ordeal led to an emergency transport to Jacobi Hospital for treatment, has instigated a follow-up by DOB inspectors who will oversee the compliance with the repair order, although there has been no further disclosure on the man’s current condition but an accident is what the police seem to think happened.
