A 74-year-old man was lucky to escape uninjured after his car plunged over a six-foot drop in the City of Hamilton yesterday.

Manuel Moura, from Warwick, was manoeuvring his Suzuki Wagon car in Par-la-Ville car park around 10.30 a.m. when it toppled over a wall and landed on its side in the road.

A passer-by helped the senior from his badly damaged car after the incident which happened adjacent to the entrance to Bermudiana Arcade. The circumstances of exactly how it happened remain unclear. Mr. Moura, who is originally from the Azores and speaks broken English said yesterday: "I pushed the car back over the wall. I have been to the doctor and he says everything is OK."

Ian Leaming, who had been working at the nearby KFC restaurant assisted Mr. Moura after the crash. He said: "I heard a bang and when I came over the man was standing up in his car in the passenger side. I opened the back door of the car and he came walking out.

"He said he had put too much gas on and gone over the wall. I told him not to worry about the car."

Another witness, who works at a nearby shop but did not want to give her name said: "I think the man was trying to parallel park alongside the wall but came off the edge which is how the car landed on its side."

Both Police and Fire Service attended the scene, where they found Mr. Moura shaken-up and complaining of back pain. Firefighters made the car safe and pushed it out of the road while Mr. Moura was taken to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for a check-up.

Yesterday's accident was not the first of this nature at the Par-la-Ville car park. A 37-year-old Devonshire man whose car plunged off a bank at the venue three years ago called for increased safety measures in the light of yesterday's crash.