2-yr-old pupil falls into 40ft pit

OWERRI—A team of medical personnel are now working round the clock to save the life of Anulika Lemchi, a two-year-old pupil of Saint Andrew’s Nursery/Primary School, Okwele, Onuimo local government area of Imo State, who fell into a 40-feet deep pit.Little Anulika was still lying in the Accident/Casualty Ward of Federal Medical Centre, Owerri, where she was receiving serious medical attention when Vanguard visited the hospital.Anulika’s full medical account could not be ascertained at press time but Vanguard noticed that the hapless girl suffered head and hand injuries probably by the pipes and blades in the pit, as she made spirited effort to free herself from imminent death.An eye witness told Vanguard that “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Lemchi’s little daughter fell into a narrow 40-feet deep pit, while playing with her peers in the school”.Confirming the incident to newsmen, Mr. Lemchi said he arrived the scene at about 10am, as soon as he was informed of the mishap, adding that he actually lost every hope of seeing his daughter alive again.Lemchi said: “It was my daughter’s immediate elder brother, Ebube, who came to inform me that Anulika fell into the deep pit. I hurried to the school and actually saw my daughter in the deep pit”.Speaking also, Mrs. Lemchi recalled that Anulika and other children were playing in the field when she fell into the pit, adding that the pit was an uncompleted borehole.She wondered why the school authorities left the uncompleted borehole unprotected from the vulnerable children and expressed gratitude to God that her daughter was rescued after about 12 hours from the pit.Explaining how Anulika was rescued, the leader of the Red Cross rescue team, Mr. Innocent Okehi, said they arrived the scene at about 6pm and worked till about 10pm when the girl was rescued.“The mission of rescuing Anulika seemed impossible because of the narrowness and depth of the pit. The inability of the little girl to respond to the tactics we adopted made the task more difficult but we thank God that we eventually rescued her,” Okehi said.culled from : vanguard Newspaper