Abstract: At approximately 5:29 p.m. on March 30, 1999, Employee #1, a substitute porter at Rockefeller Center in New York City, was taking a freight elevator from the first to the thirty-first floor of an office building, stopping at each floor to pick up the trash. As shown on the surveillance video, he opened the elevator door in the usual manner using a metal rod, stepped in, and fell two stories, approximately 37 ft 8 in., into the pit. The elevator car was not where he expected but on the fifth floor, where it was being used by a coworker for a moving job. Employee #1 lay in the pit until approximately 8:10 p.m., when his foreman found him after hearing his walkie-talkie in the shaft. Emergency Services was called and rescued Employee #1. He was transported to St. Vincent's Hospital, where he died the next day of injuries sustained in the accident.