BOY FALLS DOWN ELEVATOR SHAFT; TEEN HURT AT UNPROTECTED WORK LOCATION

A Cape Girardeau boy fell up to 30 feet in an open elevator shaft under construction at L.J. Schultz School Thursday when curiosity prompted him and a playmate to explore it, police said.

The boy, Jerry Berger, 14, suffered a skull fracture and bruises, said the boy's stepfather, Gerald Bahr. The boy lives with his mother, Theresa Evans, and Bahr, at 821 Locust.

Jerry was in stable condition at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau, a hospital spokeswoman said Thursday night.

Hospital employees said they would keep the boy overnight for observation, said the police officer.

"They were out there riding their bikes and stuff," said the investigating Cape Girardeau police officer, who asked not be named. "They were just there to see what

was in there and he walked in there first."

The boy fell from the first floor level of the school at 101 S. Pacific St.

"(The fall) was like one story, but the hole goes down below ... the basement floor level," said the officer.

The officer speculated the boy walked up to the elevator shaft from the bright sunlight and had been unable to see. "It was like a blind corner," he said.

He said a neighbor across the street from the school heard a scream and had called 911. The call came in at 5:12 p.m.

Cape Girardeau firefighters and Cape County Private Ambulance Service paramedics ripped off a plywood panel in the basement wall to reach the boy, who was laying on the dirt floor of the elevator shaft. Officials at the scene expressed amazement at the unsecured elevator shaft, since a number of children could be seen playing around the school when the accident occurred.

The contractor for the elevator project is Sides Construction Co. Reached Thursday night, the company's vice president, Bill Heisserer of Jackson, declined comment. Heisserer said he would have to check into the matter first.

But Cape Girardeau Public Schools Superintendent Neyland Clark said he had some "serious concerns" about how the work site was left by the contractors.

"We're really not sure at this point why it (the shaft) was left open. We have a contract with the contractor that all safety and precautionary measures were to be taken by the contractor."

Attempts by the district Thursday to contact Sides Construction were unsuccessful, he said. Di~strict officials hope to contact the company this morning, he said.

Clark declined to say whether he felt the shaft should have been closed off.

"We want to sit down and find out what really happened here," he said. "Until we have had an opportunity to discuss it with the contractors, we probably really shouldn't make any comment."

Clark said the welfare of the boy remained the most important thing Thursday night.

"We just want to make sure he's going to be okay," he said, "and obviously we secured the site so no other incidents of this nature will occur again." The site was secured by school district workers under the supervision of the Cape Girardeau Fire Department, said Clark.

The chairman of the district's Board of Education, Pat Ruopp, went with him to the hospital to check on the boy, Clark said.

Carolyn Vandeven, the principal of Schultz School, said district workers closed the shaft about 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

Vandeven said she had already left work for the day when the accident happened. She said she was upset.

"It's one of my (former) students who had come through Schultz," she said of Jerry. "It's an unfortunate accident."

Bahr questioned Thursday night why the contractor had not erected warning signs and closed off the elevator shaft to prevent just the type of accident that happened with his son.

"I couldn't understand why the elevator shaft was not closed off," said Bahr, a self-employed private contractor.

"It's common practice to close off any elevator shafts and any access to them," he pointed out.

"Any construction site, if there is a chance of falling, even when workers work there, it is supposed to be closed off," he said.

Bahr said he was returning home from work and saw a crowd of people gathered at the school.

He said when he arrived home, he learned that Jerry had been injured.

Bahr said his stepson and his stepson's best friend, Lamont Lane, 13, of Cape Girardeau had been playing at the school. Bahr said both youths now attend Cape Girardeau Central Junior High School. Both attended L.J. Schultz School last year.

Bahr said that initially he thought his son might have acted recklessly. "I was kind of mad at my son until I went up and looked at it."

When he inspected the site, he said, he found no barricades to prevent anyone from walking into the elevator shaft.

"You hang a left and you walk back 10 feet and you make a turn and there is the hole," said Bahr. "You take a left turn and it's there. I went over and took some pictures of it, I couldn't believe it."

Said Bahr, "It's just funny that the construction company was that lax."

Following the accident, the elevator shaft was blocked off with plywood and the main entryway was barricaded with boards, Bahr said.

He said that when his son fell into the elevator pit, Lane ran across the street and summoned help from Aubrey Kiplinger, who was working out in his yard at 26 S. Pacific.

"He really helped out Jerry," said Bahr, who credited the man with getting emergency personnel to the scene so quickly.

"It's really scary coming home from work and finding your kid's fallen down an elevator shaft," said Bahr.

"To be honest, it was really lucky Lamont was there with him," said Bahr. "Some other kid could have fallen in and it would have been the next day before they would have found him."

Construction on the elevator at the 77-year-old school started this summer. The exterior elevator will serve four floors.

Staff Writer David Hente provided some information for this story.