A witness who saw a woman plummet to her death after falling into an uncovered New York City manhole said she was “screaming” as she vanished under the roadway Monday.
“I saw a woman stepping out of her car, and as soon as she stepped out, it’s like she took one step forward and just disappeared,” Carlton Wood said, according to WABC. He said she wasn’t distracted and that she wasn’t near a work site – that the hole was open right next to her car.
Though Wood said that first responders were at the scene in minutes, it took 20 minutes for them to get 56-year-old Donike Gocaj of Westchester County out of the hole.
“She was screaming, ‘I’m dying,’ that’s what I kept hearing her screaming over and over,” Wood said.
NBC News correspondent Sam Brock also spoke with Wood on TODAY. According to TODAY.com, Wood was walking to work at a nearby restaurant when he witnessed the incident near Fifth Avenue and East 52nd Street.
Wood also told Brook that Gocaj seemed to just “vanish’ down the manhole.
“I looked down into the hole, and I saw her, and I just immediately call 911,” he said, adding that there were no cones or warning signs in the area.
Gocaj’s son, Taylor Shabanian, witnessed first responders trying to extract his mother from the hole. He said that he now thinks about not stepping on manholes every day.
CBS News New York also said that a witness who called 911 told the outlet he could hear Gocaj screaming in the approximately 10-ft.-deep hole. By the time first responders arrived at around 11:15 p.m. Monday, she was unconscious and unresponsive, CBS reported.
“She was rushed to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead,” according to the outlet.
Gothamist reported that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York determined that Gocaj died of “scald burns with inhalational thermal injury and blunt force trauma of [the] torso,” citing a spokesperson from the office. Her manner of death was ruled an accident.
“If you’re transporting steam across the city as a power source, you know, one could imagine that it was, you know, kind of well beyond 100 degrees,” said Debra Laefer, a New York University professor of civil engineering cited by CBS News New York. The outlet noted that the tragedy has “sparked questions about just how widespread manhole complaints are across the city.”
CBS searched for complaints about missing manhole covers in the city's 311 system and 711 complaints so far this year. However, it noted that some appear to be duplicates.
“This could have happened to me if I would have kept walking,” Wood said on TODAY. “It could have happened to anybody. It wasn’t about situational awareness.”
Con Edison, a utility company, manages manholes in New York. A spokesperson for Con Ed said video showed that a “multi-axle” truck dislodged the manhole cover around 12 minutes before Gocaj parked next to it, Gothamist reported. It said the company did not have any updates on an investigation into the incident as of Thursday.
Spokespeople described the incident as a “rare occurrence,” the outlet said. CBS News New York noted that there was no work going on at the time Gocaj fell in the manhole.
Laefer said that one of the suspected truck’s tires likely hit one side of the manhole cover (probably 100 to 300 pounds) and popped it up, like a see-saw. She also pointed out that most manholes are not in crosswalks, that a special tool is usually needed to remove them and that the Monday incident was indeed unusual.
Gocaj’s family also wants answers about how this could have happened. WABC reported that she is survived by two children and two grandchildren.
“Our condolences are with the family of the woman who lost her life in this devastating incident. City agencies are working with Con Ed to support the emergency response and conduct a full investigation into what occurred. Every question must be asked and answered so that no New Yorker experiences a tragedy like this again,” said the office of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in a statement cited by multiple outlets.
