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Car dives into elevator shaft

Whoa! Someone got quite a scare this morning at the Convention Center Parking garage on North Broad Street, between Race and Cherry Streets, in Center City.A black Infiniti, with a driver inside, partially fell down a ground-level car lift before 10 a.m. Andrew Afandor, an employee with the 1st Choice Response Unit tow-truck company, who was there afterward waiting to tow the car away, said he heard this account from garage employees:

Whoa! Someone got quite a scare this morning at the Convention Center Parking garage on North Broad Street, between Race and Cherry Streets, in Center City.

A black Infiniti, with a driver inside, partially fell down a ground-level car lift before 10 a.m.

Andrew Afandor, an employee with the 1st Choice Response Unit tow-truck company, who was there afterward waiting to tow the car away, said he heard this account from garage employees:

A garage worker had gotten into the Infiniti G375, which was in front of a closed elevator door. He was getting ready to park it. But the worker apparently "popped the clutch" on the stick-shift car, Afandor said, which "makes the car jump, and it moves."

The car then slammed into the bottom half of the elevator door and "hit it so hard, it opened," Afandor said. The car plunged downward, but luckily hit a platform about five feet below. The elevator car was above the Infiniti at the time, he said.

The driver was "so shooken up," but managed to get out, and slid down a pillar to the platform, Afandor said. Afandor assumes there must have been a door at the level below for the driver to then safely walk out.

The worker wasn't hurt and was sent home, Afandor said.

An earlier account, based on a passerby's information, suggested a different series of events.

When the Daily News first tried to investigate, a red-shirted garage employee demanded that the reporter leave the garage and spouted that the damaged car was "just decoration."

A manager of the garage later came by and said he could not comment.