NEW ORLEANS — What started as a routine trip to the gym on Wednesday morning landed Bradley Nodier in the ICU.
“I can barely move my right side, and my left side is still numb,” Bradley Nodier said.
Around five o’clock in the morning, Bradley says he was driving to Equip Fitness when he slammed his car into a manhole on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd and South Rendon Street.
“I was in shock. My head slung back just like a slingshot,” Nodier said.
According to Bradley, the crash caused a serious neck injury. He sent us a photo from his hospital bed, showing the bottom of his car stuck on the ground, leaving oil stains on the concrete.
“Nothing blocking it, no signs, nothing,” Nodier said.
Oil stained concrete is nothing new for the President of Markel Lumber, Gabriel Markel. Hours after the incident, he says another car got stuck on the same man hole.
“It’s claimed a lot of victims through the years,” Markel said. “There were two this week, the guy in the hospital and another car got stuck on top of it and we had to push them off.”
Markel Lumber sits just steps away from the infrastructure nightmare. He says it’s been here for around a decade, taking out tires and the bottoms of cars.
“It’s a safety hazard right here in the middle of the street,” Markel said.
"We did investigate the history of that cover and we did receive reports of it March of 2023. At that time, SWBNO repaired the cover. It appears that the depression in the street surrounding the sewer cover was the most probable cause. According to our Superintendent, we are sending crews to even out the space with a temporary gravel fill and an order has been placed to repave that area," A spokesperson from the Sewerage and Water Board said.
As a father of two and his family’s provider, Bradley says the bottom of his car is the least of his problems. He just doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else.
We reached out to NOPD for more details about the incident, and they said the report is still being processed and isn’t available yet.
We also reached out to City Council Member Lesli Harris and she was unavailable for an interview.
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