An 83-year-old woman was helping her daughter move when she stepped on rotting floorboards in a century-old South Carolina house and fell to her death down a hidden well shaft the owner didn’t even know was there, authorities said.
It took rescuers nearly four hours Sunday afternoon to pull Dorothy Downey’s lifeless body out of the 48-foot-deep hole, Oconee County Coroner Karl Addis said in a statement cited by the station WSPA.
Downey was helping her daughter pack up and move from the house on Park Avenue in Salem, which according to property records was built in 1920, Addis said.
As the unsuspecting octogenarian made her way across the kitchen floor around 2 p.m., part of it gave way and collapsed beneath her feet.
Downey’s daughter tried to look for her in the crawlspace under the house but couldn’t find her, according to a police report.
Firefighters who were called in finally were able to located the woman and bring her back to the surface before 6 p.m., said the coroner, who determined she died from blunt force injuries caused by the 4-story fall.
Addis ruled the death an accident and said he has never seen anything like this in his 31 years as coroner.