Worker sucked into sinkhole, dies.

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A construction worker has died after being buried up to his shoulders in a sinkhole on Detroit’s east side this afternoon.

Detroit Police Sgt. Eren Stephens Bell said the 36-year-old Detroit man, who was not identified, was working on a residential road reconstruction project when the road collapsed and debris, mud and a slab of concrete fell on him. The man was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Firefighters, police and crews from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department used a ladder and giant suction machine to pull the man from the sinkhole on Healy just south of 7 Mile shortly before 5:15 p.m., said Detroit Fire Battalion Chief Larry Gordon. The effort took more than an hour and a half.

“He was trapped in a muddy mire, almost like quicksand,” Gordon said.

After the man was pulled free, two shovels, an abandoned yellow ladder and the arm of an earth mover remained in the hole.

Sean Reams, 35, said he was one of several neighbors who rushed to the man’s aid. He said the man was conscious and talking, even asking for air.

“A neighbor knocked on the door and said a guy’s buried, so I did what came naturally and went to help,” Reams said, noting that the man’s shoulder was pinned by a concrete slab.

“Water was rushing in, turning into mud. It was already up to his shoulders,” he said.

Reams and the other neighbors who rushed to help before the firefighters arrived tried to use a wooden board to prevent a second concrete slab from shifting. At the time, the man’s head was only about 8 inches above the watery mixture.

The mood was somber on the quiet residential street, between Ryan and Mound roads, as neighbors gathered around the site.

Eupharzine Ruffin, 15, who lives nearby, said she is now worried about her father’s safety because he works in construction. “I was scared because he fell in the hole and concrete fell on top of him,” she said of the man.