A 56-year-old overnight cleaner parked her car in midtown Manhattan, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and fell ten feet into an open manhole. She did not die from the fall. She died from burns, scalding steam, and blunt force trauma to her chest, screaming "I'm dying! I'm dying!" while trapped underground. Her family filed a lawsuit Thursday against Con Edison, the company responsible for keeping that hole covered.
What Happened on East 52nd Street
On the night of May 18, Donike "Donna" Gocaj parked near East 52nd Street and Fifth Avenue and walked toward her job as an overnight cleaner. There was no cone, no barrier, no light, no signage, no warning of any kind. Just an open hole in the ground where a manhole cover used to be.
According to NBC News, surveillance footage reviewed by Con Edison suggests a large multiaxle truck had driven over the manhole cover roughly twelve minutes before Gocaj parked her car, dislodging it from its seat. Con Ed acknowledges this happens, though they describe it as rare. In those twelve minutes, nobody covered the hole back up. Nobody put out a single orange cone. Donna Gocaj stepped out of her car and into the dark.
The city medical examiner determined she did not die from the fall itself. She died from burns, the inhalation of scalding steam, and blunt-force chest trauma. The lawsuit describes her as experiencing "unfathomable and extensive conscious pain" before she died. She was heard screaming. She knew exactly what was happening to her.
What the Lawsuit Actually Says
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in New York County civil court by Gocaj's estate, names Con Edison as the responsible party. The complaint states the manhole was "open, uncovered, unguarded, unbarricaded and unprotected, without any warning, barrier, cone, light, signage or other safeguard of any kind," according to NBC News.
The family's attorney, Howard Hershenhorn, put it plainly: the fatal fall "was caused and/or contributed to by the negligent, careless, grossly negligent, reckless, wanton and willful conduct" of Con Edison and its "conscious disregard for the rights, lives and safety of others." The lawsuit does not specify a dollar figure for damages. Some things are hard to put a number on.
Gocaj is survived by her children Armando and Esterina Gocaj, and her longtime domestic partner Jashar "Jack" Kameraj. She was 56 years old. She was going to work.
Con Ed's Response, Such As It Is
Con Edison declined to discuss the litigation. Spokesperson Anne Marie Corbalis offered the company's condolences to the family and said, per NBC News, that the utility would "review the complaint and respond through the appropriate legal process." Which is corporate for: see you in court.
The company did at least acknowledge that truck-dislodged manhole covers are a known phenomenon. Not a theoretical edge case. A known thing that happens. And apparently, the protocol when it happens does not include anyone racing out immediately to cover the hole before a person falls into it and dies.
This Is Not a Freak Accident. It Is a Failure.
The word "accident" is going to come up a lot in this case, and it deserves scrutiny. A truck knocking a manhole cover loose might be an accident. An uncovered, unguarded, pitch-dark hole in the middle of a busy midtown Manhattan block staying that way for twelve minutes while pedestrians walk past it is not an accident. That is a systems failure with a body count.
New York City has roughly 300,000 manholes. Con Edison owns or maintains a significant portion of them. The whole reason manhole covers exist, the whole and only reason, is to stop people from falling into the infrastructure beneath the city. When the cover comes off, for any reason, the job of the utility is to make sure nobody gets hurt while it's exposed. That job did not get done on May 18. Donna Gocaj paid for that failure with a death that sounds, frankly, like something out of a nightmare.
The Dingo Take
Con Edison is a utility with $15 billion in annual revenue. They maintain the electrical and steam infrastructure beneath one of the densest, most-walked cities on earth. They know their manholes exist. They know covers get dislodged. They have surveillance cameras that apparently caught the truck dislodging this one in real time. And in the twelve minutes between that truck rolling over the cover and Donna Gocaj stepping into the hole, the answer from the most powerful utility in New York City was: nothing. Nobody came. No alert was sent. No crew was dispatched. A woman burned to death in a steam tunnel under Fifth Avenue while the company responsible extended its condolences.
"We extend our condolences" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that Con Ed statement. It is the verbal equivalent of a shrug in a suit. Condolences are for things that happen to people, acts of God, strokes of fate you could not have seen coming. This was a foreseeable, preventable, documented failure by a company with the resources to prevent it and apparently not the systems or the urgency to do so. Donna Gocaj's family is right to sue, and they should pursue it to the wall.
The city walks on top of this infrastructure every single day and mostly does not think about it. That is by design. We are supposed to be able to trust that the hole is covered, that the steam is contained, that someone somewhere is watching and will act if something goes wrong. That trust is the whole bargain. Con Edison broke it on East 52nd Street on a May night, and a woman screamed in a hole until she stopped screaming. That is what happened. Remember her name.
