A 62-year-old man who fell into a 100-foot-deep mine shaft in Arizona on Monday was rescued two days later in an operation that took several hours, officials said.
John Waddell visited the gold mine in a remote area of western Maricopa County alone on Monday but asked his neighbor, Terry Shrader, to contact authorities if he did not return by Tuesday, KNXV reported.
By Wednesday, when there was still no sign of his neighbor, Shrader decided to go out and look for Waddell himself.
"Since he didn't come home yesterday, I was bound and determined to come out here today," he said. "As I pulled out my truck I could hear him hollering. 'Help, help!'," he told KNXV.
"The carabiner broke I guess, and he supposedly fell 40 to 50 feet."
Shrader rushed off to get help, and returned with a team of over a dozen deputies and mountain rescue members.
Sgt. Joaquin Enriquez of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office confirmed the rescue in a series of tweets documenting the operation.
He noted that Waddell was "alert and talking" when they found him in the mine shaft.
Shortly after 7 p.m., he posted a follow-up tweet confirming that Waddell had been pulled from the hole and flown to a nearby hospital.
"I've been around a few rescues, but never anything like this," Shrader said, adding that he could hear Waddell scream in pain as he was pulled from the mine shaft.
Waddell was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries that included multiple broken bones.
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