view raw text
! FALLS SEVENTEEN FLOORS I AND LIVES TO TELL OF IT L i NEW YORK, N. Y., Dec. 12.-Dr. Kostokos Kostainer, physician from West Virginia, stepped into an open elevator shaft on the seventeenth floor and lived to tell the tale early today. As he plunged he grabbed desperately at the elevator cable, caught it with one hand, checking his fall, then he gripped it with his other hand and slid for fifteen floors. His slide stopped as his- feet touched the roof of the elevator at the second floor. The flesh was seared from his hands, exposing the bone. "Im glad just to be alive," he told police, who hurried him to Roosevelt Hospital. There his condition was reported as good. The physicians mother-in-law, Mrs. M Manners, Greensburgh, Pa., narrowly escaped following Kostainer, as she clutched at the side of the elevator entrance as the physician fell, thus saving herself. Dr. Kostainer, who is 28 and comes from Elkins, W. Va., calmly smoked a cigarette while being treated at the scene by an ambulance surgeon.
