By David Kilby, Staff Writer
MONROE – A 61-year old woman was found after serveral hours with her legs trapped underneath a soda vending machine at the BP gas station next to the Concordia active adult community early Tuesday morning, April 5.
At 6:39 a.m. Tuesday, the Monroe Township Police Department responded with the Monroe Township First Aid to the BP gas station, located at 1600 Perrineville Road, after a passerby reported a woman whose legs were pinned under a vending machine at the station.
When the police arrived they found Maryann Dibari of Glastonbury Lane in the Concordia active adult community, sitting on the ground in front of the building with a soda machine lying on her legs, according to the police report.
Emergency personnel lifted the machine off of Ms. Dibari by hand and then transported her by Monroe Township First Aid to Centra State Medical Center in Freehold.
When family was notified Wednesday morning, however, they didn’t know why Ms. Dibari was in the hospital.
A man claiming to be a family member of Ms. Dibari and who asked to remain anonymous, said she suffered injuries to her forehead and hip.
When Hemant Shukla, owner of the BP gas station, came to work Tuesday morning he found a note left by the police notifying him that a lady from Concordia had her legs trapped under the soda machine for some time overnight.
He later said he has no idea what happened to Ms. Dibari to cause the vending machine to fall on her.
”It must have happened between midnight and 5 a.m. when nobody was here,” he said.
He also said the surveillance cameras by the machine are not working.
No one involved in the case have any idea how or why the woman came to be trapped under the machine, police said Thursday.
”It is unknown at this time how Ms. Dibari came to have the machine on her or exactly how long she was caught under the machine,” said Sgt. Jason Grosser, press officer for the Monroe Police Department.
Mr. Shukla is just as perplexed when it comes to why the accident happened.
After reading the slip left by the police, Mr. Shukla said he called the police department to find out more about what happened.
”They don’t want to give me any more details,” he said Wednesday afternoon.
According to police, there is no active investigation into the incident and police only responded as part of the first aid call.
