On the Gothamist Newsmap, there are a few incidents that are not mapped but simply listed as "Unusual Rescue," with the time and place, and occasionally we learn what was so unusual about them.
For instance, yesterday at 5:06PM, the unusual rescue at Avenue W and East 27th Street in Sheepshead Bay turned out to be a teenager stuck in a mailbox. Really. The Daily News reports that the kid's friends dared him to go into one of those green storage mailboxes, only for the mailbox to lock behind him. The friends apparently called for help, asking for the "postal police," according to one cop. The teens are not being charged, but one resident wasn't amused. Twenty-eight year-old Jason Irgang said, "Kids will be kids, but I don't think this is funny. It's a big waste of city resources having cops out here because some dumb kid locked himself in a mailbox."
The unusual rescue at 7:46PM in Stuyvesant Square Park in Manhattan was for a woman hit by a 25-foot tree branch while walking her dog near East 15th and 2nd Avenue. The Post reports that Alexis Hanwerker's leg and arm were broken. Passerby Luis Gonzalez who helped the victim said, "I saw the whole tree was moving and just heard the crack."
Update: Another person brushed by the tree's branches says her dog is now missing. Stacie Forman had been walking her dog, Baron, but during the chaos, the dog ran away. She's still looking for him, and WABC 7 has a photo of the dog.
