A 28-year-old man was found dead in a Chinatown freight elevator Saturday afternoon, police and sources said.
The victim was discovered inside the elevator shaft at 109 Lafayette St., near Canal Street, around 1:45 p.m., and first responders used a circular saw to cut through a shared wall in Popeye’s Louisiana Chicken in the same building to extract the corpse, police said.
The body was found wedged between the elevator car on the second floor and the wall of the elevator shaft, a law enforcement source said.
Damage from the man’s possible fall was done to the “housing on the roof where the engine of the elevator” is located and that an elevator repairman was called, the source added.
Cops were still probing the circumstances behind the death late Saturday afternoon. “It’s still early in the investigation,” an NYPD spokeswoman said.
Margaret Nicoll, 61, was planning to go to her favorite Popeye’s for lunch when she discovered the ghoulish crime scene.
“Holy sh-t,” the Bronx woman told The Post. “I eat here every day. I have my mashed potatoes and two biscuits and I have my meat here.”
“A body trapped in an elevator? Unbelievable!” she added.
Additional reporting by William Farrington