Dr. Decapitated By Faulty Elevator At St Joseph Hospital

An aspiring missionary doctor, who was voted by medical school classmates as the epitome of a good physician, was killed Saturday at Christus St. Joseph Hospital when an elevator malfunctioned, decapitating him, authorities said.

Hitoshi Nikaidoh, 35, of Dallas, a surgical resident at the hospital at 1919 La Branch, was stepping onto a second-floor elevator in the main building around 9:30 a.m. when the doors closed, pinning his shoulders, said Harold Jordan, an investigator with the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office. The elevator car then moved upward, severing the doctor's head, Jordan said.

"It is an unexpected and tragic loss," said Dr. Hisashi Nikaidoh, Hitoshi's father, from his Dallas area home. "He is an outgoing and very caring person."

A woman who also works at the hospital was on the elevator at the time and witnessed the accident, police said. Because of the malfunction, she was trapped on the elevator for 15 or 20 minutes before firefighters were able to reach her, police said.

The woman was not injured, but was later taken to the emergency room because she was in shock, said Sgt. Kenneth Perkins of the Houston Police Department's Special Operations Division.

Nikaidoh was on duty at the time and wearing his doctor coat and surgical scrubs when the accident happened, Jordan said.

The scene was one of chaos when police and firefighters first arrived at the hospital, Perkins said. Medical personnel were in disbelief, some crying.

"They were trying to console one another. Just to see other people in disarray -- the looks on their faces pretty much told the whole story," he said.

Police have launched an investigation into the accident. St. Joseph Hospital officials have taken the entire elevator bank out of service, but normal patient services have not been interrupted.

Hospital officials would not answer any questions Saturday about the accident since the investigation has just begun. They also would not reveal the name of the elevator manufacturer.

One worker at the hospital said there had been problems in the past with these particular elevators and that maintenance crews had been trying to service them in the past week, Perkins said.

Nikaidoh was a member of the 2003 class of the University of Texas-Houston Medical School, where he previously served as Student InterCouncil President, the student-leader over six schools within the medical center.

He became a devout Christian while in medical school, his father said. He became a youth group leader and decided to become a missionary doctor.

Hospital spokeswoman India Chumney Hancock would not discuss Nikaidoh's background or how long he had been with the hospital. "In respect for the family, we're not giving out any information," she said Saturday.

"Since the investigation has just begun, we're not answering any questions at this time," she said.

Both city and state inspectors will review the fatal accident, said a licensed elevator inspector who served on the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation Department advisory board.

"Annual inspections are required, and I'm familiar with that hospital building and know they have a contracted (maintenance) company," said Alan Van Nort, a member of the state's Elevators, Escalators and Related Equipment Advisory Board.

Van Nort said he also is familiar with another hospital elevator accident earlier this year that injured 14 passengers, including 12 patients, at the Intracare Hospital in the Texas Medical Center area. The elevator dropped several floors before jerking to a stop and broke several passengers' bones and hurt backs and necks.

But hospital elevators are not inspected any more intensely than office building elevators, Van Nort said.

"The city has primary responsibility for inspections, and then reports of any incident go to the state for review," he said.

Mignette Yvonne Dorsey, spokeswoman for the City of Houston Building Services, said the city would be tracking the inspections done by the City Planning Department's inspectors. But there was no specific inspection information available from the city Saturday night.

We were visiting Las Vegas last summer and went to Circus Circus. We parked on the roof. We got in the elevator, along with about twenty other people, and the door closed, went down a few feet and stopped. The temperature outside was in the 100's, and the elevator was packed to capacity. The elevator had NO phone and all the the emergency button did was ring a bell on the top floor, the roof, where no one heard us, as no one was on the top floor because it was summertime and extremely hot outside.

It immediately started getting extremely hot inside...so we began pounding on the doors, yelling and screaming, and finally someone heard us and went and got someone. A security guard came running, they tried to open the doors and were unable to. There were NO elevator staff in the casino at the time! In about twenty minutes the Las Vegas Fire Department came, and tried to help us...the temperature was unbelievable...the elvator doors were on the roof, exposed to direct sunlight, and there was NO ventilation, no fan, no nothing...by this time, everyone inside was feeling sick, faint, and we were covered in sweat. There was an elderly man with a heart condition in the elevator, a baby, and a teenager that was totally freaking out...the elevator was full, so we couldn't sit or move, and it was probably getting upwards of 140-150 degrees. The Las Vegas Fire Department Firemen didn't know what to do, they kept pushing buttons, the security guards didn't know what to do, nothing worked. Finally, I yelled through the door, "people are going to start dying in here if you don't get this door open," and I yelled for someone outside to break into a car, get a jack, and just pry the doors open, just to at least get us some fresh air. The security guards were saying they didn't want to break the elevator. I yelled back "if someone dies in here as a result of your neglingence, you're going to have a lot more to worry about than a busted elevator!"

Finally the Firemen were able to get a prybar and pry the doors open a few inches. They started passing us cold bottles of water and then they got a fan and placed it at the crack between the doors, which helped a bit.

We asked what the delay was, and they said the elevator guy was stuck in traffic! I told them to just pry the door open a few more feet, and we'd crawl out! The elderly guy was drenched in sweat, pale, but wasn't freaking out, the baby was crying and the teenager was crying that we were going to die, it was worse than anything I'd ever gone through. The Firemen told us that they were afraid that if they pried the doors open and we started crawling out, that the elevator might suddenly give way and we'd be hurt by the elevator falling on us as we crawled through the door!

Finally, after an hour and twenty minutes, they got the door open. There was a huge crowd gathered outside the doors, and they took us to their security headquarters where they interviewed us, gave us free T-Shirts, soft drinks and they gave each us a free night in their casino...big whoop.

The thing that struck me was their cavalier attitude about the whole thing...when I asked them why there was no phone, fan, vent or emergency open button, they told us the law didn't require it...when I asked them why their emergency buzzer didn't ring in the security guard booth, but only rang a bell next to the elevator door, where no on heard it, they said the same thing, that that elevator was grandfathered into an older set of laws that didn't require phones, vents, emergency buzzers that were wired into the security guard booth or elevator staff on duty at all times.

What also struck me is that NO ONE with Circus Circus EVER apologized to us! When we crawled out of the elvator doors (they never got the elevator to move...they just pried the doors open a foot or so, and we had to be pulled out through the crack) there were three guys in the corner, dressed in really expensive suits, executive/lawyer types, watching us, and they didn't walk over and apologize, they just stared at us. The casino manager at the time told us where they were taking us (they had some limos, vans, etc., to drive all of us to the HQ) but she didn't say they were sorry either, NO ONE said they were sorry it happened, except the Las Vegas Firemen!

The security guards that had been so nice to us, yelling through the door that help was coming, just stay calm, all just stared at us, and didn't say anything, like everyone had been told not to talk to us, for fear of admitting liability, or something.

The risk manager head, an Asian guy, told us that they thought we were overloaded, that it was our fault, too many of us went into the elevator at once, and I asked him how come there were no signs, then, or phones, or elevator staff, etc. he didn't have a good answer, other than to say that the elevators were grandfathered in. (The next morning, by the way, we went back and noticed maintenance guys running around to all the elevators and putting up Overload Capacity signs, as there were none earlier!) I asked him about remuneration for our lost day in Vegas, and he said "well, we gave you a free meal, an overnight stay and free T-Shirts...in our view, that's sufficient remuneration."

Well, we called the State of Nevada Elevator Board, and they said that those elevators were to have been replaced a year ago, as they were the oldest in Circus Circus, but they were in fact grandfathered in as far as not needing fans, vents, phones, emergency buzzers that rang into security guard booths, etc.

I also called the newspapers, but no one was interested. They said people get stuck in elevators all the time. True, but this elevator was on top of the roof, exposed to direct sunlight, and it was only by a true miracle that one of us didn't die. In fact, those first ten minutes, when we rang the emergency buzzer, and all it did was ring a bell outside the roof elevator door, if a lady hadn't heard us and ran and gotten the security guards, I'm absolutely sure that we all would have died.

It was only by a stroke of luck that the girl heard us at all. Nobody else was using the roof parking lot/elevators because it was 110 degrees outside, and hotter on the roof, and she was there only because she wanted to take her bicycle to the roof.

By the way, the elevator guy on the state board told us what happened...it seems that a safety sensor got too hot and tripped an auto-stop switch, it had nothing to do with the fact that the elevator was filled with people, it was that the sensor malfunctioned!

Needless to say, we will NEVER stay at Circus Circus again, EVER!!!

Ed

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