SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, FLA. (WSVN) - A South Florida college student ended up in a neck brace after, he said, a ceiling tile fell on him in the middle of class, Monday morning.
Florida International University freshman Carlos Forero spoke to 7News from his Southwest Miami-Dade home after having spent several hours in the hospital.
The student said he learned an unfortunate lesson in physics. “The ceiling just came right on me,” he said. “A bucket of water [fell] on me also. It was crazy, and I’m there in shock. I felt like Chicken Little when the sky is falling.”
Forero said he was sitting in his precalculus class, at the Primera Casa Building, on the Modesto Maidique Campus, and had no idea that the laws of gravity would be added to the equation. After the unexpected impact, he said, he just sat there, stunned and soaked.
“I smelled kind of like when you’re in the sewer,” he said. “I said, ‘Why, first of all, out of everybody, it’s me?’ [I’m] having a bad day already. I went into class earlier today late ’cause I overslept, and I was like ‘Oh, no.'”
Photographs showed the damage the ceiling tile caused when it came crashing down.
Forero was taken to Kendall Regional Medical Center, where he snapped a picture in a hospital bed with his neck brace. “I had a headache and back pain after that,” he said.
FIU spokesperson Dianne Fernandez released a statement saying, “The remaining students were relocated to another classroom.”
While he recovers and tries to salvage his notes, Forero is counting his blessings that the outcome wasn’t worse. “I don’t want to go in that class worrying about a roof falling on my head,” he said. “I just want to go to class and learn precalculus because right now I just took a quiz, and I got a 50 on it. That’s not good, right?”
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