NY Daily News – March 22, 2016
by Ryan Sit
Three Port Authority Police Officers from a marine unit recounted the dramatic land rescue of a construction worker pinned beneath a cement truck in a remote section of Queens, telling the Daily News they were nearly crushed alongside the man.
Police Officers Randall Kraft, Ronald Gordon and Joseph Cusumano were on patrol in Thurston Basin, off of the Jamaica Bay near JFK Airport, when they were flagged down by a witness wildly jumping up and down and waving his arms from the shoreline at about 6:45 p.m. on Saturday, Kraft said.
Kraft was turning their boat around in the basin to resume their final sweep through the waters when they spotted a man shouting at them from the eastern shoreline of Rosedale.
“This gentleman is yelling, screaming bloody murder and he’s screaming for us to help,” Kraft said. “He’s in a panic.”
The witness alerted the officers that Manuel Mayancela was pinned beneath a cement truck in a nearby backyard on Broad St., Kraft said.
Nearby there happened to be a small, jury-rigged dock.
“The only dock was this one little shanty dock. We have a 40-foot boat and this dock is made for like a little dingy,” he said. “I managed to get us in there.”
The three officers then sprinted through backyards towards the sounds of Mayancela cries for help.
“And now we have to run to get to these screams through backyards,” Kraft said. “The blood curdling screams were just unbelievable coming from this guy.”
Kraft was the first officer on the scene. He said he knelt beside Mayancela and immediately began to assess what equipment they would need to free him. Only Mayancela’s lower legs were visible as they protruded out from under the cement mixer. He was pinned beneath the truck’s rear right axle.
“In the rear of this house there’s a gentleman completely pinned underneath this cement truck,” he said. “It was tremendous; it was a giant cement truck mixer… The full weight of this truck was on his lower torso and leg area.”
“The truck was completely on the ground on top of him,” Kraft said.
Mayancela, the 37-year-old owner of J & D Carrying and Construction, was working on the truck’s axle with its tires off when it rolled back on top of him after the gave way in the soft and sandy terrain, said Arizaga, 49.
The three officers crawled under the truck, trying to do what they could with what little resources they had.
“We did go under there we tried speaking with him. I touched him a little bit on the leg, on the pants. I wish we could do more but at that time we were kinda handcuffed,” Kraft said. “We do water rescues. We do some land training and we’re trained in a whole bunch of other stuff, but on the boat, we don’t have anything to help this guy,” Kraft said.
But as they went to investigate, the truck suddenly lurched, dropping even more weight onto the man’s body and nearly trapping the officers.
The officers radioed for Emergency Services Units from both the Port Authority and NYPD. Kraft called the NYPD and FDNY directly to assist them on navigating to the remote area.
Emergency vehicles soon arrived at the scene and police used airbags to lift the truck up and pull Mayancela free. The extrication process took about 30-extrucaiting minutes, the officers said.
Once loose, paramedics ran with him on the stretcher to an ambulance. He was rushed him Jamaica Hospital and underwent bone surgery on his legs.
“The bones in both of his legs are broken. He’s recovering, but right now he can’t talk. He’s breathing with an oxygen mask,” Arizaga said at the hospital.
“Thank God he didn’t lose his legs,” he said.
Kraft lauded the teamwork between the PAPD, NYPD and FDNY, saying without it, the result may have been far more grave.
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