Man falls 5 stories after driving his car into an empty elevator shaft

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A parking attendant has narrowly escaped serious injury while driving an SUV in an empty elevator shaft and fell five stories in a garage in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, authorities said.  The driver backed the black Lexus 350 in the shaft and the vehicle overturned after falling on top of a lift at street level in the Valet Parking Garage in the city at E. 76th St. between First and Second Avenues.

FDNY responded by removing the driver from the shattered vehicle that landed upside down and took him and another employee to the New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center for treatment of minor injuries, said Fire Department officials.  The second worker had been inside the elevator when the car fell on him, authorities said.

Their names were not disclosed. The sources said that the driver may have not noticed that there was no elevator on the fifth floor because he was backing in. Firefighters used a metal platform to remove the crumpled SUV, a Fire Department spokesman said. "It is believed he brought the car out to a customer. We do not know what happened from there," FDNY spokesman Jim Long said at the scene.