Few injured in one-man accident
Monday, June 4, 2007
The Crater Sterling Heights street maintenance worker Darrel Geist was one of the few people injured in a one-man roadside accident on Sunday, Geist reported in detail.
Called into work over the weekend to replace a missing manhole cover, Geist, armed with several small orange pylons, carefully coned off the area of the street where the metallic disc had vanished. It was at this point that Geist misjudged his step and plummeted downward through the shaft, breaking his left leg upon impact with the sewer's bottom.
He then summoned up the strength of his unimpaired leg after regaining consciousness and hopped deftly up the service ladder, only to inflict a concussion upon himself from the manhole cover that had been replaced in his absence.
Sliding the cover off, Geist reached out into the air in hopes of waving down assistance before a vehicle sped over his right arm, fracturing it in four places. He eventually hoisted himself out of the hole with his intact limbs and, receiving no response from passersby to his distressed outcry, dragged his mangled figure to a nearby pay phone to call for medical attention. Geist was hurried to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, where he was treated, after a night of going unnoticed in the emergency room, for multiple broken bones, head trauma, and mercury poisoning.
The Sterling Heights Police Department has received no telephone calls regarding the incident.
