A man was centimeters away from being crushed to death on Tuesday when the elevator at his India apartment complex suddenly lurched upwards while he was exiting it.
Vatsalbhai Pancha already appeared to be having a bad day as he paced inside the elevator while returning to the Gujarat Housing Board residential complex in Valsad, India, as seen in CCTV footage obtained by The Sun.
He braced both his hands on either side of the door — a nervous tic that may have saved his life.
When the lift reached Pancha’s floor, he only managed to get one foot out of the narrow doors before it suddenly boosted upwards.
Pancha appeared to slam his head against the ceiling, knocking him downwards — and safely out of the elevator that nearly sliced him in half.
The lift surged upwards so quickly that the doors didn’t even close, according to the CCTV footage.
Some sort of electrical issue was cited as the reason for the dangerous error.
Pancha suffered internal injuries in his near-brush with death, the outlet reported.
Other residents on multiple floors in the 14-story complex told local media that they heard a loud crash when the lift malfunctioned. Curious neighbors seeking out the source of the noise found Pancha collapsed near the elevator bank and rushed to his aid, the outlet reported.
Sabarmati Building Chairman Himati Roy said that elevator technicians fixed minor issues with the light and fan mere days before the freak accident.
A building spokesperson noted that they hadn’t received any major complaints about the elevator before Tuesday’s trouble, the outlet reported.
On the other side of the equator, pro golfer Andrea Pavan was “badly injured” in a similar freak accident a week earlier.
Pavan, a 36-year-old Italian golfer competing in the Investec South African Open Championship, fell three stories down an elevator shaft after “the doors opened on the floor he was on but the car itself wasn’t there.”
Pavan said that he had surgery on his shoulder and back after the fall. He grimly noted he has “a lot of rehab and hard work” ahead of him.
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