completely alone, trapped in a space barely wider than a shoe
box after plummeting perhaps 30 metres into the tiny crevice
between two buildings in Manhattan.
His skull was fractured, one arm was broken and he had a
collapsed lung. But he was alive. Still, as day turned to night
and back to day again, there was one
urgent question: Would help arrive in time? Not only had
Vongtau, a 19-year-old New York University sophomore,
survived the fall, but he had been trapped for nearly 36 hours.
"It is a testament to the kid's will that he is alive," he said. "I
don't know how he lasted." Firefighters broke through two
cinder-block walls to reach him.
The gap between the two buildings is wider on the higher
floors, but the last six metres or so of space is quite narrow
because of a setback. That lack of space
might have helped slow his fall, officials said.
There is also an old fire escape on the building next to the
dorm as well as an unused fire escape attached to the dorm,
and officials said it was possible he could have fallen from
one of those as
well, in which case he might have fallen a shorter distance.
Vongtau was awake on Monday and talking to friends and
family members, but it was unclear whether he was able to
recall the details of what happened.
The weekend started like a typical one for a college student,
with a night of partying Friday. After going out, Vongtau
went to the 10th-floor dorm room that
another student, Michael Yablon, shared with three
roommates.
Yablon, Vongtau and another friend were still awake when
the sun came up.
At around 7 am, Vongtau left the room "to get some fresh
air," Yablon said.
Soon after Vongtau walked out the door, someone pulled a
fire alarm, waking up residents and causing a brief period of
chaos. By the time it was clear that it was a false alarm,
Vongtau had disappeared.
At first, his friends thought he must have gone to his dorm
room in nearby Alumni Hall to get some sleep.
But on Saturday afternoon, they started to worry. Yablon said
that Vongtau, who was born in Nigeria and moved to the
United States when he was 12, always returned messages.
When his friends were unable to contact him, they were
convinced that something was terribly wrong.
Saturday night they alerted campus security and, later, called
the New York Police Department. Yablon on Monday said he
did not think the university treated his concerns with enough
urgency.
But university officials said they did all they could with the
information available. By Sunday morning, the university's
security officers had contacted nearby hospital emergency
rooms and checked to see whether Vongtau's student
identification card had been used to enter any university
buildings. His friends began a frantic
search, on foot and online. They even reached out to his 13-
year-old sister on Facebook, hoping his family might have
heard from him.
It was all to no avail. Then, on Sunday evening, Yablon said,
someone got
in touch with the friends about a stray pair of grey high-top
sneakers discovered in a hallway on the seventh floor of the
dorm.
Yablon said they quickly realised the shoes belonged to
Vongtau and once again contacted campus security.
John Beckman, an NYU spokesman, said the initial reports
indicated that Vongtau left the dorm on Saturday, but with the
discovery of the shoes, attention was focused on the building
itself.
A security officer checked areas usually off limits to students,
including the roof, Beckman said. Students are warned that
going on the roof can result in their
being kicked out of the dorm. Nothing was found on the roof,
Beckman said.
About 5 pm, a security officer checked the area around the
bottom of the fire escapes and found Vongtau's phone. He
also heard what sounded like a
soft moan, Beckman said.
At 5:11 pm, Blatus arrived on the scene.
From the fire escape of the adjacent building, firefighters
could see where Vongtau was located and they quickly
determined that the safest way to get to
him was through the wall of the garage.
"It was a painstaking process," Blatus said.
They cut through two layers of cinder blocks, being careful
not to cause structural damage to the building or further harm
to Vongtau.
It was also critical to get him medical treatment.
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