A New York City man had to be pulled out of the crosswalk on his way to work Tuesday morning after a patch of street gave way under his foot.
Steven Suarez, unable to pull his leg out of the mini sinkhole, sat with one leg in the ground and one leg folded on top while he waited for help to arrive, the Daily News reported.
Suarez was delivering a tire to his workplace at Kings County Auto Body, one block away. He was pushing a hand truck when he fell. He managed to call a co-worker as people stopped to see what the problem was, and he then quietly waited for the fire department to arrive.
“It was terrifying,” said Suarez, who lives in Staten Island told the Daily News. “I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know whether I was going to sink into the floor or what was happening. I was scared. It was my whole entire right leg, up until my tailbone basically.”
“He was down on his knee,” said Suarez’s co-worker, Joe Grunbaum, to PIX 11. “That’s pretty much it. And he was like lost, he wasn’t sure what to do.”
“He seemed to be in a lot of pain. His face was showing a lot of pain,” he added.
The 33-year-old Suarez was as confused as the passersby who saw him sitting there with one leg in a hole, not sure what to think. “He wasn’t saying anything. People just stopped and asked him ‘what’s going on?’ It was kind of awkward seeing only one leg,” said construction worker Danny Flores, who observed the scene.
“There were cars speeding and passing me, and the pedestrians were trying to stop them,” said Suarez. “Then the police came and they were controlling the traffic around me until the fire department came down.”
After the fire department arrived and managed to free his leg, the Department of Environmental Protection arrived and repaired the thigh-sized sinkhole, filling it with asphalt.
Though they managed to wiggle his leg out of the hole, his shoe didn’t make it. He was brought to Woodhull Hospital. According to CBS 2, he came out of the incident with a hairline fracture, and will take a few days off work to recover.
“I was supposed to drive today and my boss said it’s not raining yet, walk,” Suarez said. “And I walked. I was supposed to drive. I wish I did drive.”
From NTD.tv
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