Man says he ducked from big shadow

A shadow saved Daniel A. Rioux's life.

''I was walking back to the office," Rioux said. ''I heard this kind of crashing noise, and I saw this kind of big shadow coming down. I was able to take a couple of more steps and kind of duck, but then I got hit and went down. . . . I got hit by something."

That something was a piece of the scaffolding that collapsed onto Boylston Street in Boston Monday afternoon, a portion of which slammed into Rioux's lower right leg. The 3-ton construction scaffold plunged from an Emerson College dormitory under construction, killing two construction workers and a young doctor who was driving by.

Rioux is one of two known survivors of the collapse. A second man who rushed over and offered first aid to one of the mortally injured workers declined to comment yesterday. He was treated for unspecified injuries and released from Massachusetts General Hospital.

Stunned by the blow that knocked him to the ground, Rioux said he immediately noticed something was wrong with him.

''My leg was all bent the wrong way," he said in a telephone interview yesterday from Boston Medical Center, where he is recovering.

Rioux said he began to rearrange his damaged leg after he was hit.

''I was trying to put my leg back to where it at least looked like a leg again, and I just started asking for someone to help me," he said.

He paused and then added, ''And then I looked to the left, and I saw another guy lying on the ground."

Rioux said that the man was lying about 3 feet away from him and that he believed the man was one of the construction workers who died.

''I just kind of thought that it was OK, that in the worst case, I was going to lose the bottom half of my leg from the knee down," he said. ''And I said, 'I can deal with that, if that's all that is going to happen to me out of this.' "

Two strangers, one of whom was wearing a construction hardhat, stopped and helped him, he said.

''They tried to tell me I was going to be OK and all that stuff," said Rioux, of North Attleborough, who will turn 38 April 12. He is married with two young children. Paramedics soon arrived and transported him to the hospital.

Rioux said he was walking back to his office on St. James Avenue, after working out at the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common on Avery Street, when he was struck.

''I never thought something like that would happen," he said. ''I was just walking down the street and carrying my gym bag and my lunch."

He said he usually works out with co-workers from Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., but happened to be alone.

''I was the only one who went over," he said. ''I'm glad that was the case. Who knows what would have happened to the other guys if they were with me?"

Rioux said he had has already undergone surgery and faces more operations to repair his damaged tibia and fibula. ''I'm pretty banged up. . . . I'm lucky to be alive."