A 25-year-old woman plunged 10 stories down a trash chute at a New Jersey apartment complex, in what police believe was a drug and alcohol-induced incident.
The harrowing fall occurred shortly after 1 p.m. on Sunday in Hackensack, as the woman, reportedly visiting a friend in the building, experienced a state of “paranoia,” according to WABC.
A witness recounted to the Daily Voice that the woman, after leaving her friend’s apartment, entered a garbage room alone and climbed into the three-foot-wide chute.
Massiel Gutierrez, who was disposing of boxes in a garbage room on the seventh floor, told WCBS that she heard the woman “screaming in a different language.”
“All I hear is screaming … It freaked me out so much that I ran,” Gutierrez said. “Then I thought, wait, maybe someone needs help.”
“I was like wait, hold up, maybe somebody needs help.”
Gutierrez also claimed residents on the 14th floor heard “knocking” on their doors before the woman fell.
Fire crews who had rushed to the scene were unable to find the woman – but she landed on the fourth floor.
She was stuck in the chute and trash was backed up, the Hackensack Fire Department revealed.
Investigators don’t know the reason why the woman ended up in the chute – but cops concluded she was high on drugs and intoxicated, according to WABC.
The woman was eventually rescued from the chute around 28 minutes after firefighters first arrived on the scene.
“The fire department determined that she was in an area inaccessible by the trash door, so we had to commence breaching to reach her,” Keith Rosazza, the Hackensack Fire Chief, told reporters.
Crews cut away panels on the chute discharge, while others geared up for a potential wall breach before the rescue took place.
“They used saws to breach it and they were luckily able to remove the trash out from the bottom that had accumulated in the chute, so that they were able to safely remove the victim that way,” Rosazza said.
She was hospitalized with significant injuries to her lower body – and one firefighter was injured after cutting their arm on the metal.
Officials at the building haven’t commented.
