Blind Man Hurt in Fall Into Street Trench

An 81-year-old blind man crossing a street near USC on Wednesday fell into a 17-foot-deep trench dug by city crews and was badly injured, authorities said, suffering broken ankles and possible head injuries.

It took 40 Los Angeles city firefighters about 90 minutes to rescue Tobe Jackson, a beloved volunteer teachers aide at the Braille Institute, from the sewer repair excavation at Vermont Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard. He had walked there from his apartment around the corner.

Jackson, taken unconscious from the scene, was listed in serious condition Wednesday night at County-USC Hospital.

Sanitation workers had removed a steel panel that had covered the trench because they were about to fill and seal the pit, said Capt. Stephen Ruda of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Board of Public Works spokeswoman Linda Aparicio said the agency was conducting a “thorough and vigorous investigation” of the incident and would eventually disclose its findings. She declined to give any other details.

Jackson’s neighbors at University Gardens, the federally subsidized complex where he has lived since the 1970s, blamed the city for the accident.

“If they had a guard around the hole, he would have known,” said Sheila Garner, who works in the management office at University Gardens. “It’s so sad because it didn’t have to happen.”

As part of his normal Wednesday routine for last 10 years or so, Jackson was crossing the street shortly after 9 a.m. with the aid of his walking stick to take a Vermont Avenue bus about six miles north to the Braille Institute. Jackson, who will be 82 on March 8, helps at a ceramics class there for other blind people.

Garner and others said Jackson knew his way around the neighborhood and to the bus stop. Relatives said he was a former professional dancer and singer who went blind about 40 years ago.

Joyce Solomon, a resident at the complex, said he would navigate by using his walking stick and tapping every two steps. He would have stopped if there had been warning cones placed around the hole, she said.

Nancy Niebrugge, the Braille Institute’s communications director, said she was not familiar with the details of Jackson’s accident. However, she said, even a blind person who is well trained in mobility and orientation skills would have little defense against a deep hole that has no barrier around it.

“If precautions weren’t taken around the hole, I can see how something can happen,” she said.

At the Braille Institute, Jackson assists ceramics teacher Dori Atlantis by helping recycle clay and showing students how to get supplies. All the time, she said, Jackson sings and hums popular songs from the 1930s and 1940s that he loves so much.

“He is just a happy presence,” Atlantis said. “He doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. He is such a warm, outgoing person, the kind of person that never meets an enemy. No one is ever a stranger to him.”

His neighbors described Jackson as active and independent, a widower who is able to shop, cook and do his own laundry. He makes maple syrup that he gives away as gifts.

“Just yesterday he came to the office to pay his rent--he always paid early--and gave us a bottle of syrup he made,” said Garner.

Rosemary Dowell, who manages the apartment complex, had a bottle of unopened maple syrup on her desk. “He is such a good tenant--and a good man,” she said.

A group of relatives and friends waited at the hospital Wednesday night, hoping to see Jackson. His sister, Beatrice J. Shaw of Los Angeles, said she heard a radio news report about the accident and knew the victim was her brother.

She was praying for his recovery. “God is over everything. I just trust him,” Shaw said.

After Jackson fell, firefighters supplied him with oxygen and built a scaffold to stabilize the sides of the trench before retrieving him.

Among the more than 40 firefighters dispatched were members of the Urban Search and Rescue team, who are equipped with specialized equipment.

Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents the area, said he expected the investigation will find out whether “the necessary precautions and safety measures were in place and, if they were not, why they were not.”