There, Mr. Riggio came to rest after having fallen in stages, apparently hitting several uneven surfaces on the way down.  Another man on the street saw the commotion, ran over, and dialed 911.  As firefighters from Battalion 1 in Lower Manhattan raced to the scene, Mr. Riggio, 59, pulled out a cellphone and called his wife, Joann. She was at the Jersey Shore when his call came in.  “He said that he fell, he fell through a hole,” Ms. Riggio, 48, said a short time later, as she drove north on the Garden State Parkway to be by the side of her husband of 17 years.  “He said he was injured,” she said. “He said he was bleeding and he possibly broke his ankle.”  Firefighters arrived at the scene, at 20 Murray Street, and Mr. Riggio spoke to them, said Daniel Sheridan, a battalion chief.  “He was calm,” Chief Sheridan said, adding that Mr. Riggio’s good spirits and cooperation helped the rescue. “He’s a tough guy.”  The firefighters hooked a harness to a bucket lift and eased him out, an operation that took 13 minutes. Mr. Riggio’s friends from the betting parlor watched, hoping he was not badly injured. Later, they said he was a friendly man who came regularly to bet.  They said he had a 3-year-old son.  Afterward, some workers cordoned off the hole with orange plastic barriers. A man wearing a T-shirt from the city’s Office of Emergency Management arrived and appeared to examine the location. Lying crumpled on the sidewalk nearby were some racing forms that someone had scrawled on with black ink.  A cigar was lying amid the papers, and ashes were on the window sill of the clothing store, DeJaneiro Ladies Clothing and Shoes.  Outside Mr. Riggio’s apartment building, on Duane Street, a doorman said: “He’s a good guy. He’s a very nice man.”  Some neighbors asked about him.  “He’s a wonderful guy,” a woman said.  Ms. Riggio, who spoke as she drove to St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan, said her husband, who owned his own business, had never been at the center of such a ruckus. He did attend the music festival at Woodstock 40 years ago, she said, and his nickname, Jimi, came from his appreciation for the guitarist Jimi Hendrix when he was a teenager.  But he did not like Woodstock, Ms. Riggio said. It was rainy.  “He’s having the same kind of weekend he had that weekend,” she said.  As for betting, she said, “He enjoys the horses, that’s for sure.” Asked if his luck was running up or down, she said: “He always thinks he’s up. That’s the nature of gambling: you always hope to win.”
A Manhattan man disappeared 30 feet down a hole when rusted metal doors in the sidewalk gave way near an OTB parlor downtown.