Courtesy of Joyce Bellamy
A young woman walking toward her ride home from an all-ages bar event stepped onto East Street — and down into a storm sewer, until the club owner and the club owner’s son eventually rescued her.
The adventure took place Sunday evening around 11:30.
Christine Wright, who lives in the Hill and attends Amistad-Elm City High School, was at an alcohol-free “juice bar” night with a “Beach Party” theme at Pearl Street Lounge at 169 East, by the Mill River.
The party let out around 11:30 p.m. Around 100 kids came out of the club, according to club owner Joyce Bellamy.
Wright and two friends started crossing the street to the car of an adult, Belinda Gibbs, who was to drive them home. Gibbs noticed a hole in the ground and sought to alert the kids, according to Bellamy.
Too late. Wright fell out of sight — into the storm sewer.
Courtesy of Joyce Bellamy
Where Wright fell.
It turns out someone had apparently stolen the iron grate that covers the sewer, which handles storm runoff, according to city public works chief John Prokop.
Wright fell into muck up near her shoulders.
The club hired an extra-duty cop for the evening, but he was nowhere to be found, according to Bellamy. “I don’t know if he had another incident to attend to,” she said.
Bellamy and her son Robert Smith separately rushed to the young woman’s aid amid the general chaos of a club dispersal as well as screams of, “Somebody’s stuck in the gutter!’
“I seen somebody’s fingers holding onto the gutter, trying to hold on,” Smith, an 18-year-old Hamden High School senior who’d been at the party, recalled Monday. “Her friends were crying. I got down on one knee. I grabbed her arm. My mother grabbed her other arm. A security guard came over there; we all pulled her up.”
“She would have fallen [completely] in the water” and been in great danger if she hadn’t immediately been rescued, Bellamy said.
Courtesy of Joyce Bellamy
Medics arrived and took Wright to Yale-New Haven Hospital. She was treated and went home later that night.
Wright’s family declined comment on the incident.
Public works chief Prokop said thieves have been swiping iron and brass grates and covers around town lately.
“They can take it to a junkyard and get 150 bucks for it. It weights 150 pounds; you don’t expect someone to steal it,” he said. The city doesn’t want to drill the covers shut because often police need to have them lifted to search for evidence from crimes or workers need to get in to make repairs.
Prokop said he had a crew out replacing the cover by 12:30 a.m. Monday.