A 45-year-old elevator mechanic from Mesquite, Texas, died after falling approximately 20-feet into an open hoistway at the parking garage of 1515 Elm Street, Dallas, Texas, around 8 p.m. Friday, November 1, 2013. The elevator technician, whose name was not yet released by authorities, was apparently servicing equipment in a mechanical room adjacent to the open shaft when he fell. The Dallas Fire Department urban search and rescue team was dispatched to recover the victim, who was declared dead on arrival by the responding paramedics. A spokesperson for the Dallas Police Department said they did not know what caused him to fall, but indicated that it appeared to be an accident, and that Dallas homicide detectives and OSHA were investigating.
Category Archives: Fall Down Shaft
Tampa, FL – Man suffers fatal fall down elevator hoistway at Tampa International Airport
Chad Wolfe, a 31-year-old auto mechanic from West Newtown, Pennsylvania, was found dead around 3 a.m. on March 15, 2013, after he apparently fell down an elevator hoistway at Tampa International Airport in Tampa, Florida. Initial reports noted that the victim was intoxicated and behaving erratically, including climbing on a tree in the airport lobby, moments before the accident occurred. The medical examiner’s report noted that the victim had an “oil-like substance” on his hands, and that the investigating detective noted that it appeared the victim “forced open [the] elevator door to gain entry into the elevator shaft.”
Initial reports noted that the hoistway door interlock on the elevator had been “compromised” and that it “had been tampered with” but added that there was no indication that the interlock had malfunctioned prior to the incident. The elevator had passed its most recent inspection before the accident.
This case serves as an unfortunate reminder that the general public should never try to access an elevator hoistway for any reason. The hoistway door interlock, like any other mechanical or electronic device, can be damaged by abuse or vandalism, leading to failures, which can result in unfortunate situations like this where a passenger was able to pry the doors open with their bare hands. Hoistway doors should remain fully closed and locked any time the elevator is not present at that landing. An open hoistway should always be treated as an imminently dangerous fatal hazard.
Download the medical examiner’s report, as provided by 10 News WTSP, or watch their video reports, below:
Sources reporting this incident locally include:
- 10 News WTSP – Medical Examiner: Death of Chad Wolfe, man who fell down Tampa International Airport elevator shaft, ruled an accident
- 10 News WTSP – Body found at TIA
- Bay News 9 – Elevator death at Tampa International Airport ruled accident
- ABC Action News – Tampa International Airport elevator shaft death ruled an accident
- Tampa Bay Times – Elevator death at Tampa airport determined to be accidental
- Bay News 9 – Surveillance video released of man who died in TIA elevator shaft
- ABC Action News – Airport elevator accident victim Chad Wolfe laid to rest in his native Pennsylvania on Thursday
Mount Vernon, NY – 11 year-old boy falls down elevator shaft
According to NBC New York, an 11-year old boy fell three floors down an elevator shaft around 12:30pm on Sunday, December 9, 2012. According to police, the victim and other young boys were playing in the building hallway when “the elevator doors unexpectedly opened and one of the boys fell in”. The condition of the boy was not immediately clear, but presumably the boy was hospitalized and sustained serious injury.
Read the full story by NBC New York, published December 11, 2012.
The description of the incident according to police and according to NBC New York indicates that the boy was rescued through the roof of the elevator car. Given that, the elevator doors could not have “unexpectedly opened” in the sense that the doors themselves opened. Rather, based on the description of the accident, involving boys playing in the hallway, it appears that the victim likely struck the door with force, causing the door gibbs to fail, causing the lower retaining door gibbs to break away, thus allowing the bottom of the hoistway door to swing open into the hoistway enough to allow the boy to fall into the open hoistway.
This is similar to the case in which a wheelchair-bound man in Korea crashed his motorized wheelchair into elevator doors, causing the door gibbs to fail, and causing the man to fall into the hoistway. Interestingly, Korea requires that hoistway doors bear a sign with a pictograph that depicts the hazard created by leaning on, or otherwise applying force to, hoistway doors. This appears to be a case in which the hoistway door was forced to bear excessive forces and ultimately failed, exposing a member of the public to the potentially fatal hazards of the hoistway.
Bronx, NY – Man moving mattress falls down freight elevator shaft
According to ABC 7 Eyewitness News New York, Joseph Ryan, a 35 year-old man died around 11 p.m. Monday after plunging two stories down a freight elevator shaft in an apartment building located on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. The man was moving into a new apartment and was apparently walking backwards and carrying a mattress at the lobby level when the incident occurred. The man fell down to the basement level and suffered injuries that he succumbed to after being transported to nearby St. Barnabas Hospital. Early accounts of the accident described that the door was open but the elevator was not at the floor at the time the incident occurred. Tenants in the building noted that the freight elevator was shut down every night and that only building maintenance workers and security guards had access to the elevator.
Interestingly, the article noted that although the victim was not working at the time, he worked for a private elevator contractor during the day. The New York City Department of Buildings investigated the accident and determined that the victim had apparently used a drop key to open the hoistway door and gain access to the elevator for at least one prior trip on the elevator. The Department of Buildings also issued a violation for an apparently malfunctioning mechanical door interlock on the incident elevator. The Eyewitness News report also noted that the Department of Buildings had received a number of tenant complaints about the elevators prior to the incident including one that noted “no one uses [the elevator because] they are afraid.”
Read the full story by ABC 7 New York, published March 2, 2010, or watch the videos below.