Have you ever walked over a grate or a manhole in the street and wondered what would happen if it gave way and you fell? Something similar happened to Donike Gocaj, a 56-year-old mother who lived through any New Yorker’s worst nightmare.
After getting out of her car in front of the luxury Cartier store in Manhattan, she took a couple of steps and literally vanished off the map. She fell into the void through an open manhole between 3 and 4 meters deep. It had no protective cones or barricades.
“I’m dying, I’m dying!”, she screamed desperately from the bottom. Witnesses say there was boiling water and steam below. Although rescuers arrived within minutes, they pulled her out unconscious and she died at the hospital. Con Edison claims that a truck moved the cover just 12 minutes earlier.
