It’s the “worst way” to die in New York City.
Falling into a manhole – as devoted mother Donike Gocaj did late Monday – can expose victims to boiling hot steam that’ll kill them, a former city medical examiner once told The Post.
Judy Melinek recounted her at-times stomach-churning experience as medical examiner in 2014, in tandem with the release of her book “Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner.”
When asked what’s the worst way to die, Melinek launched into the horrific 2002 death of a bartender who was thrown into an open manhole during a fight.
The man, given the pseudonym Sean Doyle, had screamed for help but rescuers couldn’t climb down because temperatures in the steam tunnel reached 300 degrees, Melinek said.
Doyle’s body was still 125 degrees when it was recovered four hours later.
Melinek – who wasn’t available for comment – thought Doyle had been “steamed like a lobster,” with his outer layer of skin peeling off and his internal organs cooked.
He likely was fully conscious as he boiled to death.
“The worst nightmares I ever had in my two years at OCME,” Melinek wrote, “came after I performed the postmortem examination of Sean Doyle.”
City medical examiners are still investigating Gocaj’s cause of death.
— Additional reporting by Jordan Donegan
