Thursday, November 7, 2013
Student rescued after falling and getting caught in 2-foot-wide gap
A 19-year-old New York University student who went missing over the
weekend was found trapped in a narrow gap between a dorm and a neighboring parking garage in lower Manhattan, where rescuers had to
break through a wall on Sunday night to free him. Firefighters pulled Asher Vongtau from the space between the 17-story NYU dorm and the neighboring 5-story building, officials said.
An FDNY official said the space was between 18 inches to 2 feet wide. It
took firefighters about 90 minutes to break through a wall in the
garage and free Vongtau, said Fire Chief Joseph Schiralli. "He was
conscious, he was moving, he was definitely tired," said Schiralli.
NYU spokesman John Beckman said in a statement that the school had been
searching for Vongtau since students reported him missing early on
Sunday. The search had included looking for him in local emergency rooms
and tracking where his NYU ID had last been used. After hours of
searching, an NYU security worker looked in the space between the dorm
and the garage and found Vongtau, conscious and moaning.
It's not clear how Vongtau became trapped there, officials said, though it was possible he had fallen out of a window or from the roof of
one of the buildings. Authorities said he was taken to Bellevue
Hospital in stable condition. As he continued to recover, his condition
was upgraded to fair on Monday, the hospital said.
No comments:
Post a Comment