A woman has died after falling through a rotting floor in the kitchen and into a forgotten well shaft beneath.
Dorothy Louise Downey, 83, fell almost 50 feet to her death after coming to her daughter's home to help her move. Her distraught daughter was desperately crawling beneath the house trying to reach her mum to help.
The tragic accident happened at an 100-year-old home in Salem, South Carolina, on Sunday. Local police said Dorothy was helping her daughter move out of the two-bedroom property when she fell through the floor.
Emergency services were called and Salem Department and Oconee Emergency Services managed to get Dorothy' out of the well at around 5.45pm. The house was first built in 1920 and was listed as in 'poor condition', Oconee County records show.
The coroner ruled Dorothy's death as accidental. She was helping her daughter move out of the property at the time, reports suggest.
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The great-grandmother fell through the rotting floor into the old well (Getty Images/iStockphoto)In August the property, which included 25 acres of land, was sold for slightly more than $300,000. The local sheriff's department is conducting an investigation into the incident.
According to an online obituary, Mrs Downey was born on June 21, 1929 in Terre Haute, Indiana, the daughter of Ralph and Leona (Barber) Price. She was a homemaker and worked at the Eastern Star Home for 4 years.
Her husband Robert F. Downey died in 1996 after almost 50 years of marriage. She is survived by a number of children, 11 grandchildren; 24 great grandchildren and great-great granddaughter.
Unexpected accidents can rip families apart in moments. A is sharing her heartbreaking story after her seven year old daughter suffocated due to a seemingly harmless children's toy. Tiffany McIntyre, from , found her daughter Zahmira lifeless in her bedroom with a giant helium balloon over her head.
Zahmira had been playing with the balloon in her room when it popped and she put it over her head, quickly suffocating from the helium gas. Tiffany, a single mum, and Zahmira's younger sister Charleigh, six, are devastated by their loss.
Tiffany said: "Charleigh asks about her sister every day and says how much she misses her. It's heartbreaking. And every time she sees a balloon she tells everyone that it hurt her sister. She and Zahmira did everything together, they were inseparable."
In September 2020, during Covid, Zahmira was taking online school lessons. After one lesson where she wasn't focusing properly, Tiffany sent her to her room to lie on her bunk bed.
"I told her she needed to listen to her teacher," Tiffany told . "Zahmira had ADHD and she kept getting out of her seat and not paying attention. So when the lesson finished, I told her to go have a lie down whilst I cleaned the house."
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