NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City gravedigger has been injured while falling backward into a freshly dug plot.

The accident happened Friday morning while the worker was positioning a monument on the grave at St. John’s Cemetery in Queens.

Fire Department of New York officials tell The New York Times that the worker was semiconscious when paramedics arrived. The FDNY tells the New York Daily News that the hole was 8 feet deep.

Firefighters strapped the worker to a specially designed basket and pulled him out using a pulley anchored to a backhoe.

The man was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center in critical condition.

A hospital administrator had no information on the worker’s condition Saturday.

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