AWFUL ORDEAL.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20485, 11 December 1934, Page 1

AWFUL ORDEAL.

Man, [Trapped in Well, Tries

to Cut Off Leg.

United Press Assn. —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. DUBLIN, December 10.

Charles O'Leary, aged thirty years, trapped at the bottom of a 45ft farmvard well, tried to amputate his own leg in order to free himself from a broken ladder which was pinning him under fallen debris: but the shock and pain were so great that he succeeded onlv partially in severing the limb. O’Learv, at 4 p.m. to-day, was seven feet down the well with his brother. He was holding to a ladder when the sides of the well collapsed, carrying O'Leary and the ladder to the bottom. The rungs caught his leg like a vice and he was buried in debris to the neck. A hundred soldiers, engineers and Civic Guards, working with ropes and chains all night, succeeded in releasing O’Leary’s arms; and another party is digging a tunnel sloping towards his feet. The tunnel cannot be completed before nine o’clock to-morrow morning, so with O’Leary’s agony increasing, docdoctors, at his request, passed down the necessary surgical instruments, together with instructions how to amputate the leg. The difficulty of moving his arms, combined with the pain, made it almost impossible for him to complete the operation, it is believed. O'Leary is now unconscious.