A 56-year-old New York woman died Monday night after stepping out of her parked car and falling into an open maintenance hole on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, authorities said.
Donike Gocaj, from Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, had parked her Mercedes-Benz SUV near West 52nd Street just before 11:20 p.m. when she stepped directly into the uncovered hole in front of the Cartier building. She fell approximately 10 feet, where steam exposure triggered cardiac arrest. She was transported to a hospital but was pronounced dead.
Con Edison, the city's electric utility provider, is investigating how the maintenance hole came to be left uncovered. The manhole cover was discovered about 15 feet away from the opening. Authorities are examining whether a truck may have run over the cover and displaced it.
"We are deeply saddened to confirm that a member of the public has died after falling into an open manhole," Con Edison said in a statement. "We are actively investigating how this occurred. Our thoughts are with the individual's family, and safety remains our top priority."
Gocaj's family members expressed shock and grief over the sudden death, speaking to local news station WABC about the tragedy.
The city's Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees maintenance holes connected to the sewer system, has fielded more than 700 service requests for missing covers so far this year. While deaths from falling into maintenance holes remain uncommon, they represent one of several hazards that plague urban streets.
The incident echoes a 1979 tragedy when a 17-year-old college student was killed by falling masonry near Broadway and West 115th Street. That death prompted sweeping changes to facade inspection requirements and scaffolding standards across the city.
In 2019, a homeless man was discovered dead in a Manhattan maintenance hole two weeks after falling into it. A 2022 study analyzing national data from 2007 to 2017 found that 388 trauma patients fell into maintenance holes across the country, averaging 20 to 49 cases annually, with roughly 1 percent proving fatal.
Author James Rodriguez: "This is the kind of preventable urban catastrophe that should have been solved decades ago, yet the city still fields hundreds of missing cover complaints a year."
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