A CHINESE deliveryman who had just taken a large order of curried shrimps to the 35th floor of a New York block of flats spent more than three days stuck in a lift without food or water.

Ming Kuang Chen had made his delivery to an off-duty police officer when the express lift taking him down the 38storey building stalled between the third and fourth floors.

That was on Friday. He did not make it out until Tuesday.

Yesterday investigators were still examining how his plight had gone unnoticed for so long, despite a door-to-door search in the block of 871 flats.

Building chiefs insisted that their video surveillance was working in each of the tower’s 12 lifts, although there is a blind spot immediately under the camera.

Mr Chen said that he yelled to alert anyone within earshot when he was not sleeping. He raised a caretaker on the intercom five or six times at the weekend, but Mr Chen speaks little or no English. Before firefighters rescued Mr Chen they were told by employees in the building that he was drunk.

Police began a search when his employers at the restaurant reported him missing and his bicycle was found in front of the Bronx block.

Mr Chen had cancelled his mobile phone two days before the delivery. Asked if he would continue working as a deliveryman, he said: “I don’t want to think about it now.”

He added: “The tips in that building are all bad.”

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