TRAPPED IN WELL

Hokitika Guardian, 11 December 1934, Page 5

TRAPPED IN WELL

MAN’S DESPERATE PLIGHT

EFFORT TO AMPUTATE LEG

(United Pres* Association--By Electric Telegraph—o°PyUght.)

DUBLIN, December 10.

; Charles O’Leary, a man 30 years of age, became trapped at the bottom of a 45-feet farmyard well. O’Leary tried to amputate his own leg, in order to free himself from a broken ladder that was pinning |him under fallen debris; but the shock and the pain were so great that he succeeded only in partially severing his limb.

When the .accident occurred, : <rt 4 p.m. yesterday, O’Leary was seven feet down the well, (along (with his brother. He . was holdinq the-ladder when the sides of the well collapsed, carrying O’Leary and tbe ladder to the bottom. The rungs of the ladder caught his leg like a vice, and he was buried in the debris up to the neck, One hundred .soldiers,, engineers and Civic Guards, working with ropes and chains all night, succeeded in releasing O’Leary’s arms, and there is now a party digging a tunnel in a sloping direction towards his feet. The tunnel cannot be completed be'iore nine o’clock this morning so, with O’Leary’s agony increasing, doctors, at his request, passed ' clown the necessary surgical instruments together with instructions for him as to how to amputate his leg and the difficulty of moving his arm, combined with bis pain, made it almost impossible for him to complete tbe operation.

It is believed that O’Leary is now unconscious.