They say New Yorkers can handle just about anything, but Brooklyn man Stephen Suarez said he was terrified Tuesday morning when a narrow sinkhole opened up, swallowing his entire right leg.
The 28-year-old was walking along a crosswalk when the freak accident occurred.
“I thought I was going to fall straight through the ground completely,” he told CBS-affiliate WCBS. “When I fell, I fell straight down. I fell on my tailbone, fell straight through. I was in a lot of pain.”
WATCH: Stephen Suarez recalls the moment his leg was swallowed up in a sinkhole
Suarez’s coworker, Joe Grunbaum, was in shock.
“It almost looked like he didn’t have a leg. It was just there, it was gone,” he said. “He was in pain, clearly in pain.”
Firefighters decided against opening the hole wider to let out Suarez. Instead, they carefully lifted him straight out.
Suarez escaped the incident with all his limbs relatively intact, but he did lose his right shoe to the sinkhole. He suffered a hairline fracture to his right leg.
“It was terrifying, definitely terrifying,” said Suarez.
WCBS reported that investigators from the Department of environmental Protection were trying to determine how the sinkhole opened up on the street. There was no damage to water mains or sewers, they said.
The sinkhole has since been patched over by the Department of Transportation.