Elevators, not the safest place these days? Between flame attacks, horrible accidents, electrocutions and now snapped cables—suddenly the stairs never looked better. Last night a 17-year-old boy in the Bronx survived after the cable holding the elevator he was on snapped, sending him plummeting six stories! "His body flew to the ceiling like he was in a rocket," the boy's godmother told the News.
Kenneth Lacen was taking the elevator from the fifth floor of a the Highbridge building off West 162nd Street to the second floor where he lives last night around 9 p.m. when the cable snapped. The impact of the fall was so strong it reportedly shook the building. "I just heard the thing pop and it just went down. I thought I was going to die." Lacen recalled. Though he was thrown around quite a bit, he'll be fine. But he did suffer leg, back and neck injuries in the fall. And luckily, he's got good perspective: "I’m just happy I’m alive," he says.
The elevator in the building has multiple open violations according to the Department of Buildings, including failure to maintain building in code for worn car shoes, improper lighting and unsecure electrical wires on the top of the elevator. At least one neighbor had of late been too afraid to take it: "I heard the elevator clicking and I said to myself, 'This elevator is going to snap,'" Shantane Franklin, told the News. "It sounded like someone was moving furniture—it was that loud."
