(YouTube)
An elderly woman was injured after she plummeted through cellar doors after texting on a New Jersey sidewalk.
In a video of the incident, the 67-year-old woman appeared to pull her cell phone out right at the last second while walking down a Plainfield, New Jersey sidewalk. Unbeknownst to her, there are two sidewalk cellar doors open with a worker inside.
The woman continues to walk toward the hazard until her legs strike the doors and she falls directly in. The drop from the sidewalk to the bottom was 6 feet, and emergency crews had to respond to the scene to tend to her. They took her off in a stretcher, and she is said to have “serious” injuries.
Watch the full video of the incident be low:
Two women who were walking in the opposite direction of the unidentified woman saw the entire situation unfold, but they were too late to warn her of the hazard in front of her.
The incident was recorded by a surveillance camera out in front of Acme Windows on Somerset Street, and it happened just after noon, ABC 6 News reported.
The unidentified woman’s son told the New York Post that his mother is “legally blind” and has difficulties seeing blended colors.
“She regularly takes on schedule her meals and checks her sugar,” he said to the news outlet. “As far as I was told, when she was walking down the street, she felt a little nauseous in a sense, and looked at her phone to see what time it was.
“When I first saw the video, my heart dropped. It was painful to watch.”
After she fell into the cellar doors, a large crowd gathered as members from the Plainfiled Fire Division arrived on scene to assist the woman and rush her to an area hospital.
ABC 6 said the reason the doors were sitting open on the sidewalk is because crews were working on repairing gas lines in the area.