Lehigh Acres man has car damaged by open manhole

When you’re behind the wheel of a car, things can change in an instant. One man says he’s paying the price after driving over an open manhole in Lehigh Acres.

It happened at the intersection of Grandale Street and Hazelwood Avenue South. The manhole is closed now, but his car is badly damaged.

The man spoke to WINK News reporter Maddie Heron and told her the car would cost at least a couple thousand dollars to repair. Right now, his car is out of commission.

The damage to his car is more than meets the eye—so much so that he didn’t realize anything was wrong until he got a better look at it at home.

That’s where he said he noticed things like his transmission and other important car parts were broken.

“It felt like my motor fell out of my car,” said Dalton.

Dalton, who did not want us to use his last name, told WINK News he was surprised to see what he had really hit on Thursday night.

“I stopped probably about maybe 50 feet away. And, yeah, the manhole cover was off of the covering,” said Dalton.

The manhole was propped up on its side.

“The first thing that came my head was, ‘I got to get it covered,’ so obviously, I pick it back up and put it where it needs to go, so no one else can get hurt,” said Dalton.

After muscling the cover back into place, Dalton snapped this picture of the manhole cover flipped up from the road. It’s how neighbors described the cover positioned at least an hour before Dalton hit it.

“It was sticking up out of the ground. I thought it was a dead duck because it was up this much from the road, and I thought it was the wing that was up, and it wasn’t,” said Ann, Daltons’s neighbor.

Ann lives a few doors down. She said she first saw the uncovered manhole from her window, but regrets not taking a closer look.

“I didn’t think to go out and look to see what it was,” said Ann. “Normally I would, but it was getting late, so I didn’t go look. And I should have, then I would have had the manhole back down with another cover on it.”

A loose manhole cover sparks many questions: How did it get like that? Who is responsible for it?

Lee County confirmed to WINK News it’s not theirs, and others like FGUA have yet to respond.

While Dalton waits for answers, he says he’s frustrated but hopeful his car will get fixed eventually.