2-year-old critically injured in elevator fall

A 2-year-old boy is reported in critical condition at Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital after a fall down an elevator shaft at a hotel in Joliet.

Joliet Police Lt. Jeff Albert says the boy was with his mother and sister in a room at the Plaza Hotel on Sunday afternoon when he got out of the room and went to the elevator, where he began playing with the control buttons.

Albert says that when the elevator began to descend, the boy hit a button which stopped it and opened the doors between floors. He tells the (Joliet) Herald-News the boy slipped through a gap and fell down the shaft to the basement.

The boy was first taken to Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet, and then flown to Children's Memorial.