Co-host (24:19)
From a young age, Carrie o' Connor had an intense love of learning. When she learned how to read, her parents had to bribe her to get her to put her book down so she would go outside and play with the other kids. While Carrie loved to learn about all things, her favorite subject was French Culture. And so she began devouring all things French. And then in middle school, she began studying the language. And by high school, she was nearly fluent in taking college level French courses. Carrie would go on to earn several degrees in French, including a Ph.D. and in 2019, she put that Ph.D. to use when she was offered a full time professorship at Boston University. She eagerly accepted the role. After her first full year at bu, she decided it was time to get an apartment that was closer to campus. So In August of 2020, shortly after Carrie's 38th birthday, she, along with her two beloved cats, moved just 10 minutes away from Boston University into an old apartment building on a busy street. With her apartment still filled with unopened moving boxes and furniture wrapped in plastic, Carrie broke out her laptop and enthusiastically wrote an email to all of her students for the year titled the Joy of Learning French. In it, her students saw her passion for the French language and how excited she was about the upcoming academic year. A few weeks later, on Monday, September 14th, Carrie was back at her apartment building after classes and and she had just purchased a brand new piece of furniture that she wanted to haul up to her apartment. This piece of furniture was not actually assembled. All the parts and the directions were inside of this box that was 7ft tall, 1 foot wide, and weighed just under 80 pounds. And so Carrie got this huge box out of her car at street level and then hauled it all the way through the front doors of her apartment building into the first floor lobby where she leaned it up against the wall and then pressed the call button for the elevator. To understand what happens next, you need to have a basic understanding of how Cary's elevator worked. Once the elevator car arrived on your floor, you would slide open this big door called the hoist way door. And on the other side, you would see the elevator car. And on the car itself would be yet another door. This door is called the car gate. This metal accordion style door would also be slid to the side manually. But unlike the hoistway door, the car gate had to be shut all the way in order for the elevator to move between floors. So when the light dinged in the first floor lobby above Carrie's head, she opened up the hoist way door. Then she reached inside and slid open the car gate. And then she grabbed her package and began trying to push it inside of the elevator car. The only way it looked like she could fit this huge package inside of the elevator was if she got it in there at an angle standing up. But no matter how hard she pushed and pulled on it. She just could not get it to go inside. And so while Carrie's doing this, another tenant happened to walk in the front doors of the apartment building. And they saw Cary struggling. And at first, he just walked past Kerry and started going up the stairs towards his own apartment. But he stopped and he turned and he just said to Kerry, hey, I don't think it's a good idea to keep doing what you're doing. That package looks like it's too heavy to be on that elevator. The elevator's really old, and you might trip a sensor, and it might start moving before you're ready. You know, we've had problems with that elevator before. It's just not worth the risk. And so Carrie, who's already pretty committed to doing this, she hesitates for a second and just kind of looks at her package. Then she looks up at the guy and says, you know what? I'm just gonna try one more time to get it inside the elevator. And so Carrie goes back to trying to get it on, and this other tenant hesitates for a second and then decides, okay, I'll help her do it. And so he goes down and he holds open the hoist way door with his hand, and Kerry goes inside of the elevator car, and. And she uses her hip to keep open the car gate. And the two of them begin pushing and pulling. And finally, they're able to wedge this package at an angle inside of the elevator car. And so Cary thanks the guy, and he says, no problem. He turns and walks up the stairs, and he disappears. Once he was gone, Carrie didn't press any of the floor buttons. Instead, she tried to close the car gate over the top of her package. But at the same time, a maintenance worker in the floor below her, which was the basement, hit the call button for the elevator. Unbeknownst to Carrie, the top of our huge package, when they wedged it inside, had pressed up against the sensor at the top of the door frame. That registers when the car gate has shut. And so when the maintenance worker pressed the call button, because that package was pressing on the sensor, it tricked the elevator into thinking the gate was shut and secured. And now it was time to move. And so the car began to go down, but it only made it a couple of feet before the movement caused the package to. To slip off of the sensor, causing the elevator to stop. Carrie was most likely very confused how this car would have moved, considering the car gate was still wide open. But she had bigger problems. She was now trapped between the first floor lobby and the Basement. But she didn't panic. Instead, she decided she would just get her package back inside the elevator car, and then she would figure out what to do next. The package, when it came off that sensor, had fallen forward and was basically jutting out of the elevator. So the top half of it was in the first floor lobby, propped up against the floor of the. The first floor lobby. And so Carrie turned around so her back was facing outside of the elevator, and she got down in a squatting position underneath her package. So her shoulder was up against the package. And then she began pressing it up as hard as she could until she managed to press the package back inside of the car. But again, the top of that package made contact with that sensor that registers whether that gate is shut. And so, believing it was shut and secure, the elevator began moving down again. And this time, Carrie, whose back is to the opening of the elevator, she lost her balance and fell backwards out of the elevator into that narrow space between the outside of the elevator and the inside of the elevator shaft. Now, if the elevator had not been moving, she probably could have just crawled back up into the elevator. But unfortunately, her package this time did not slip off the sensor. And so the elevator still believed the gate was shut. And so it kept on moving down. And so as soon as Carrie fell into this narrow space, the movement of the elevator would have kind of sucked her up into that space, crushing her up against the inside of the elevator shaft wall as the car forces its way down past her towards the basement. But the car doesn't even get to the basement. It stops once Carrie is pinned perfectly between the elevator and the elevator shaft walls. When the fire department finally arrived, it was too late.
