Video captures moments man crushed by elevator at Manhattan Promenade building.

NY Post: Graphic video shows moment man crushed by elevator at Manhattan Promenade building.

One of every New Yorker’s worst nightmares played out Thursday morning when a Kips Bay man was crushed to death by an elevator in his luxury high-rise as his horrified neighbors looked on, authorities said.

Sam Waisbren, 30, clawed desperately to escape the packed lift as it plunged from the lobby into the darkness of the shaft below, but he was crushed between the elevator car and the shaft wall, according to officials.

“The guy literally was trying to climb out onto the floor while the elevator was still [moving down],” said a building worker, who witnessed the death and asked not to be identified. “It’s awful.”

The horrific scene, which played out at the 23-story Manhattan Promenade tower on Third Avenue near East 25th Street just after 8:15 a.m., was captured on building surveillance footage exclusively obtained by The Post.

As one woman stands waiting, the elevator door opens into the lobby and a man wearing a backpack emerges, then wheels around as the lift gives way and Waisbren and five others go rocketing downward, the clip shows.

Waisbren instinctively shot out his right hand to grab the frame of the elevator door and tried to plant his right leg onto a sliver of lobby floor, but was immediately overpowered.

“His initial reaction was to put his arm out . . . so he could get off,” the building worker said. “At that point, the elevator took him down. Jumping out [of] the car while it’s still moving, you just don’t want to do it.”

Advisory - The video is graphic and NSFW. You can't "unsee" it, so think carefully before deciding. (There is no audio). Video located after the Pagebreak.

Man dies from taco-eating championship contest.

FOX 10 Phoenix: California baseball team cancels taco-eating championship after man dies.

Dana Hutchings [age 41] died during an amateur taco eating contest Tuesday night.
[.]
Mathew Boylan, who watched Tuesday’s contest, says he noticed Hutchings because he was eating much faster than the other two contestants.
[.]
...Hutchings collapsed about about seven minutes into the contest and hit his face on a table as he fell to the ground.

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FOX 10 Phoenix Archived

Your odds of...are...

Discover the Odds: Odds of being hit by lightning; 1 in one million.

CBS News: Odds of winning lotteries is roughly 1 in 259 million for Mega Millions and 1 in 292 million for its cousin, Powerball.

Elite Daily: Odds of being in an airplane crash; 1 in 11 million.

Forbes: Odds of surviving an airplane crash. (They vary).

Discover the Odds: Odds of being murdered in any given year; 1 in 18,989.

Yahoo Answers: Odds of a huge cruise ship sinking or crashing. ("Titanic" scenarios very rare).

Best Health Degrees: Odds of dying while attending a dance party; 1 in 100,000.

The Wildlife Museum: Odds of being attacked and killed by a shark; 1 in 3,748,067.

Golf Link: Odds of a hole in one: PGA player 1 in 2,500; average player 1 in 12,500.

Injury Fact/National Safety Council: Odds of dying by falling; 1 in 114.

Straight Dope: Rare, but yes, people have been killed by falling pianos and falling safes. Same link notes the following on death by falling anvils:

It’s difficult to imagine why one would ever need to hoist an anvil high enough for it to drop on someone. However, we can’t rule falling anvils out entirely, due to a little-known pastime called anvil shooting, an exemplar of the hold-my-beer-and-watch-this school of redneck diversions.

The concept, which can be seen in practice in numerous online videos, is lethally simple: You put an anvil on the ground, fill a concave space on its upper surface with black powder, insert a fuse, set a second anvil on top, light the fuse, and run like hell. The detonation sends the top anvil flying in the air — preferably straight up and then straight down, but you can see where things could go tragically awry. We didn’t find any instances of this actually occurring, but thanks to the Road Runner we have an artist’s impression of what might happen when it does.

I don’t want to give the impression that getting killed by falling objects is uncommon. On the contrary, the advent of large-screen and more recently wall-mounted televisions has created an entirely new category of real-world danger: death by falling TV.

And a MUST READ - Philthy-Delphia: Odds good you will NOT be eaten by a bear because you smell like a potato. Odds not as good the bear won't kill you anyway.

How ya feeling about your odds? At the moment, or, in general?