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Old 06-11-2004, 09:46 AM  
Jedimaster
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Join Date: Dec 2003
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A 900 pound break-dancing instructor gets a free ride on a cargo net and gurney.

900-pound man rescued from apartment

Anthony Ramirez
New York Times News Service

NEW YORK - A man weighing 900 pounds complained of shortness of breath on the hottest day of the year Wednesday, and firefighters spent more than two hours rescuing him from his fifth-floor Manhattan apartment, which he had been unable to leave, the Fire Department said.

Lawrence McConneghey, 36, was taken to Columbia-Presbyterian Center of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition last night.

"He felt sick and he's obese," said McConneghey's sister, Maritza, 33, who spoke to him after he was treated at the hospital. "He feels OK now." She said her brother now weighed 900 pounds.

McConneghey could not walk, the authorities said. He was lifted by cargo netting out of his bed around 3 p.m and was slowly eased over the next two hours out of his apartment and down the stairs at West 150th Street and Riverside Drive.

He was carried by firefighters and paramedics down four flights because the building's elevator did not work.

A neighbor, Herbert Savage, said McConneghey was rarely seen outside the building or his apartment. He occasionally had a health-care worker visit him, Savage said, but last week McConneghey obtained a wheelchair that was too wide for the man's apartment door.

"I don't remember the last time I saw him," said Savage, 67. "But he was maybe 400 pounds when I saw him then and he just went up and up and up."

Dozens of onlookers and neighbors attracted by the fire truck, ambulance, and, later, television and newspaper reporters gathered in front of the apartment building at 736 Riverside Drive near the Sugar Hill section in Upper Manhattan.

There, the gurney carrying the man was eased over two wooden planks into the rear of the ambulance while friends and relatives of the ailing man held up sheets so that news photographers and onlookers could not see him.

Small children squeezed between the legs of adults to try to look under the sheets. "Come over here!" one little girl said to another. "You need to see this!"

Cooper's plan is to diet, exercise, swim and break-dance again. "No doubt I'm going to lose the weight," he said. "Just watch."
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