A bike messenger whizzing through Midtown traffic narrowly escaped a grisly death yesterday when he was squished between a truck and a city bus.
Doucoure Adama, 26, was pinned in an 8-inch gap between a panel truck and the M1 bus at around 10:45 a.m. as he tried to squeeze between the vehicles on Madison Avenue at 40th Street, police and witnesses said.
“When they came to a stop, he got mashed,” said witness Sidney Morris, a worker for the Grand Central Partnership. “He was screaming like hell.”
When the bus driver tried to back away, it only seemed to make matters worse, causing Adama to scream even louder, Morris said.
Emergency personnel were able to free the trapped messenger after about 20 minutes by deflating the tires of the bus and truck and using inflatable expanders to push the vehicles away from each other.
Adama was in critical but stable condition at Bellevue Hospital with injuries to his head, neck, back and arms, police said.
The driver of the panel truck – registered to RM Inc. of Norwalk, Conn., and bearing the message “Be a Blood Donor. Thanks,” in huge letters on its side – was too shaken up to comment.
Adama, an immigrant from West Africa, was making a delivery for Cayor Courier Service when the accident occurred. His manager, Glenn Mann, 42, said Adama lives in The Bronx with a cousin and is trying to save money to build a house for himself in Africa.
“I feel really bad. He’s a young kid still,” Mann said. “He’s always smiling and happy. He does his job well.”
Bike messengers are routinely injured in collisions with automobiles as they compete for space along Midtown’s choked streets. After Adama was freed, several other bike messengers gathered around a pile of blood-speckled towels and the mangled remains of his black Raleigh bike. Many shook their heads.
“It’s the street. It’s really narrow for an avenue, and then you’ve got to dodge all these potholes and all these big trucks and buses, too. It’s crazy,” said messenger Curtis Carr.
“Madison and Lexington avenues are the worst,” he added.