A 47-year-old woman plunged six feet today when a sidewalk collapsed beneath her in Manhattan, the New York Daily News reports.
Mariana Trujillo, 47, who sells flowers along the sidewalk in Washington Heights, had parked her cart near Broadway when the sidewalk suddenly gave way about 7:40 a.m., witnesses said. She tumbled into a long-abandoned underground vault next to the building where she lives, the Daily News story says.
"We were all sleeping and all of a sudden we heard a bang, like thunder,” a neighbor told the Daily News. "We came out and she was inside the hole."
Trujillo's husband was standing next to her and escaped injury, but he could only watch as his wife cried out for help. "She had a big concrete slab on her leg," said a neighbor who saw the sidewalk collapse.
Firefighters lifted Trujillo from the hole on a backboard. She was hospitalized with a broken leg and other serious injuries.
Dozens of residents were forced out of their homes when city inspectors ordered the building vacated while they investigate what caused the collapse.
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