MANHATTAN — A pedestrian complaining about the dangers of falling ice suffered minor injuries after he was hit in the face by frozen chuck of ice that calved off the side of a Midtown building, witnesses said.
"It came from the top of the building," Onikwa Thomas, 46, a witness, said. "It was a little bigger than the size of a football."
The man, who onlookers said was in his 30s, was struck in the head in front of 32 West 48th St. between Fifth and Sixth avenues about 1:30 p.m., fire department officials said. He was taken to Weill Cornell Hospital where he was treated for head trauma.
"I was leaving a restaurant. A piece of ice fell and he looked up and said 'They should do something about this,'" Thomas, 46, said quoting the victim. "Then he looked up again and another hit him in the face."
The man staggered into a covered pedestrian walkway and collapsed on the ground.
"He was in shock," Angela Ragouzeos, 30, said. "He was bleeding from his nose and above his eye."
She said his face was scraped up.
"I thought someone threw a glass bottle at him," she said. "He knew exactly what happened."
She said that she helped the man to a stool and stayed with him until the ambulance arrived.
"He said, 'I'm glad it happened to me and not an old lady," Ragouzeos said.
