Body cam footage shows moments officers find man stuck in Riverside manhole for 3 days

RIVERSIDE — Newly obtained body camera footage shows the moments officers discovered a man who had been stuck in a utility hole for three days.

Saturday just before 4:10 p.m. Riverside fire and police were called to 500 block of Reading Road to reports of a man being found underground after falling through a manhole cover, according to a police report.

Body camera footage shows an officer rushing to the utility hole where other officers and people nearby are attempting to talk to the man stuck.

The officers yell down into the hole, a 20-foot drop, and continually ask the man what his name is.

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A man approaches the officers and tells them there were tools found in the woods near the manhole.

“I was fishing and I seen the lid open and I walked past and I heard somebody, like a moan, and I looked down and I was like ‘dude are you alright,” another man tells the officers.

After not seeing a ladder out of the manhole, people nearby said they decided to call the police.

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“How long you been down there bud?” an officer asks the man in the hole.

“He told us three and a half days,” one of the men nearby tells officers.

“Three and a half days!?” The officer replies.

Riverside fire crews arrive on scene and began discussing ways to get the man out of the hole.

Fire crews were able to free the man from the utility hole around 5:30 p.m. and he was taken to the hospital with a large cut on his right ankle.

He told officers he went into the hole “looking for god” and fell in, according to a police report.

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