TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The death of a man who was killed inside an elevator at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare has been ruled accidental.
Incident reports from Tallahassee Police Department show that the emergency stop button was pushed and did not appear to be "manipulated".
According to the report 60-year-old Robert Myers, an elevator technician with Otis Elevator Company, was called about a broken elevator during a security guard's midnight shift. They said that the company told the security guard that Myer would come out to TMH at 5 a.m on February 17.
When he arrived, he began to work on the elevator, but found that it was working properly. TPD said that Myers called the guard back to tell him that the elevator was fine. It was then that the guard told him that another elevator in the same lobby was having issues as well. They said that Myers told the guard that he would check on the elevators again.
TPD said that this was the last time anyone contacted Myers.
They said that Myers was last seen on camera at 5:16 a.m, as he stepped through the doors of an elevator. When a family of three called the same elevator Myers was working on, police say that Myers was still no where to be found on video.
The family on the elevator told police that when they got on the elevator, they began to travel to the ground floor before they heard a loud knock and grinding noise as the elevator went down. Eventually the elevator stopped, stuck in place.
According to Walter "Raleigh" Council (employee of the Otis Elevator Company), the position of the emergency stop button in the bottom of the elevator shaft was pushed in or in the "stop" position.
TPD says that after a review of all evidence, they believe Myers' death was an industrial accident.
