Woman Crushed by Falling Sofa from Rooftop Says ‘I’m broken in pieces’
Edita Butkeviciut was left needing serious medical care and fighting for her life after a sofa reportedly fell from a tenement roof and crushed her.
According to the details, a Scottish beautician, 31, was on her lunch break in Aberdeen when the piece of furniture slammed into her from above.
The beauty technician is now in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and is expected to need seven weeks of recovery after having surgery on multiple broken bones and a fractured spine, reports The Sun.
Barry Law, 27, and Lee Morrison, 33, threw a sofa from the top of the building in an attempt to remove it from Aberdeen’s apartment in Scotland, back in December 2019. The 31-year-old woman from Lithuania felt “alive and lucky” and “in pain every day” after the incident at the Nail Connail Bar on Union Street.
Butkeviciut suffered a smashed spine in three places, broken thigh and ankle, shattered collarbone and damaged liver after being floored by the burgundy leather settee. Surgeons inserted metal plates and pins into Edita’s crushed back and legs during emergency operations as they battled to save her.
She faces at least another eight weeks in hospital and up to another year to get back to anywhere near normal. She said of her ordeal: “I’m broken in pieces. I can’t even give my boyfriend a hug any more. At first they thought I was going to be paralyzed because I was so badly hurt.”
“I’ve been told I will be able to walk again but my life has still been ruined and all for something so stupid. I’m going to be disabled,” she added.
She said her boyfriend of 11 years, Daniel Ferreira, would probably have to be her caretaker.
The nail technician said: “We had so many plans and were looking forward to going on holiday but now we’re going to struggle to pay our bills.”
Barrie Law and Lee Morrison admitted culpable and reckless conduct at Aberdeen Sheriff Court on Tuesday in their absence, a court official confirmed.
In a statement issued through Digby Brown Solicitors, Lithuanian national Butkeviciut said: “It’s been more than a year since my injuries and I still have metal plates in my spine. I’m in pain every day, cannot sit straight for longer than 40 minutes and I’m not able to go back to work.”
“I am glad these two men admitted what happened so other people can learn an important lesson because you can’t go about throwing things from windows – people can get seriously hurt and what happened to me proves that. I’ve been helped a lot by my sister-in-law and my best friend and I am grateful for their support but I would now like my privacy respected so I can focus on my physical recovery.”