Jogger’s wild convo with man stuck in drain
A jogger has described the moment he discovered a man stuck inside a Queensland stormwater drain.
The man – who was reportedly beneath the ground for 36 hours – is now at the centre of a police investigation.
Brisbane man James Lingwood was jogging on Sunday morning when he heard the man’s cries reverberating out of the sewers.
“I was coming back from my jog and this particular morning my iPod wasn’t working, so I pulled the earbuds out of it,” Mr Lingwood told Nine on Wednesday morning.
“Normally, I’ve got music blaring and I wouldn’t have heard anything.”
Mr Lingwood was stopped in his tracks when he overheard a voice yelling in the distance.
“I hear this loud voice in an argumentative tone arguing about something … and I thought, it can’t be coming from the drain. That’s impossible,” he said.
Mr Lingwood said he thought his “imagination (was) going wild” and started walking away before having second thoughts.
“So I walk back and the voice got louder and I’m standing over the grate and I leaned over and said, ‘Hello, anybody down there’?” he said.
“Out of the darkness this guy came sloshing through the water, knee deep in water and he looked up.”
Mr Lingwood said he asked if the man was all right and was shocked by the reply.
“He said, ‘Bro, no problems, bro, I’m good. I can get out up the top where I got in. Not a problem in the world’.”
Gobsmacked by the response, Mr Lingwood continued with his jog but couldn’t stop thinking about the interaction.
The next day, he went out for another run and decided to check on the man.
“I heard this sort of moaning, groaning sound,” Mr Lingwood said.
This time he called triple-0 and within 20 minutes a major emergency response was under way, with fire trucks, ambulances and police cars racing to the scene.
“They got him out … like a fish out of the drain,” Mr Lingwood said.
While initially the incident was hailed as a heroic story of survival, police are investigating whether the man was in hiding after allegedly being a passenger in two dangerous driving incidents, The Guardian reported.
Queensland Police has been contacted for comment.
