Brooklyn man rescued after being sucked into sinkhole

A man became trapped in the middle of a New York road after a freak sinkhole swallowed most of his right leg.

Steven Suarez, a 35-year-old mechanic, was delivering a tyre to a customer in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn when the 2ft hole opened up beneath him in the middle of a pedestrian crossing.

"I didn't know what was going on," he told the New York Daily News. "I didn't know whether I was going to sink into the floor or what was happening. I was scared.

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"It was my whole entire right leg, up until my tailbone basically."

Trapped in the middle of the busy street, Suarez says traffic continued to speed by until passersby came to his aid.

Members of the local Hasidic Jewish community's volunteer police stood guard at the scene until emergency services arrived.

Firefighters were able to extricate Suarez from the road, although he did lose a shoe in the process. He was taken to hospital as a precaution, but released without requiring treatment.

The cause of the sinkhole is unknown, but city officials said there was no damage to the sewer and water systems below and that the hole will be filled with asphalt.