Soot Cushions Manhattan Girl's 14-Story Plunge

A young girl's trip to the rooftop to show her cousin the Manhattan skyline turned out badly yesterday when a misstep sent the 12-year-old plummeting 180 feet down a chimney, the New York Daily News reports. But a 2-foot-deep mound of soot in the basement apparently cushioned her fall, reported stunned rescuers. Despite a broken hip and three damaged vertebrae, she's expected to make a full recovery.

"She's in ICU and she's got a thousand tubes coming out of her, so I'm a little on edge right now," her father said. “She's having a hard enough time breathing. There were six different things that could have killed her. Honestly, she should be dead right now.” (More teenager stories.)