A teen girl fell down a 2-meter deep manhole while aimlessly crossing Jaffa street in Jerusalem Sunday afternoon.
"She just fell straight down!" said an alarmed construction worker at the site. "She was crossing the street diagonally, not at the crossings, and had her head buried in her tablet. She just didn't see where she was going, and slipped."
The girl who was crossing towards the light rail station was accompanied by a friend, who immediately came to her aid along with several bystanders. Within minutes, the teen was pulled out of the hole, shaken but unharmed besides a deep laceration to her leg.
"I'm fine, I just can't believe this happened," she repeated. After receiving initial treatment from bystanders, the girl was moved to the nearby Terem Emergency Medical Center.
The section of main Jaffo street between the Jerusalem Central Station and Mahaneh Yehuda market is undergoing reconstruction for the past several weeks. The particular strip of road where the incident occurred was not fenced off whatsoever, in order to allow free passage to buildings on both sides of the street.
Following the event, the construction workers at the site are rearranging their equipment in order to block off the manhole and other dangerous areas. "She was okay, she was laughing inside the hole," said the worker, "but it could have been a lot worse."