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Rescue crews lower a firefighter into a well in Portrero, Calif., to rescue a man who had fallen inside.

SAN DIEGO -- Fire crews rushed to the Potrero community in San Diego’s Mountain Empire area Sunday afternoon to rescue a man who had fallen down a 35-foot well.

According to Cal Fire Capt. Mike Mohler, the victim fell down the 35-foot hole in the 1300 block of Potrero Circle at around 4:15 p.m. local time (7:15 p.m. ET). The fall knocked the man unconscious, Mohler said.

Rescue crews set up a tripod above the well and lowered a firefighter into the hole to rescue the 42-year-old man. He was pulled from the well at around 6:18 p.m. (9:18 p.m. ET), Mohler said.

An air ambulance transported the victim to a local trauma center. Mohler said the man's exact condition was not known, but he was likely in serious or moderate condition because of the length of the fall.

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At one point during the "confined space" rescue mission, Cal Fire crews had to drop a pump down into the well, fearing ground water would rise up and possibly drown the victim.

"That's always a concern in this type of rescue mission," Mohler said. "They had a lot of moisture down at the bottom of the well."

Mohler said the well had been boarded over and abandoned. The board snapped under the man's weight and he fell.

The victim was identified by his wife as Jerry Fowler of Potrero.

A Canadian man who visited San Diego was charged with rape by intoxication by the district attorney’s office.

Whistler resident Nelson Drake, 39, was arrested in Dallas, Texas, on Feb. 20 after an arrest warrant for $1 million was placed the day before. He was then extradited to San Diego and placed in the South Bay Detention Facility.

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At Drake’s arraignment, prosecutors said the rape occurred when he was in San Diego for a business convention.

Drake’s bail was placed at $100,000. If convicted, he faces up to eight years in prison.

A North County lawyer is furious after being trapped and forgotten inside a local jail for hours.

Attorney Erubey Lopez spoke to NBC 7 about the ordeal for the first time Friday.

Lopez said it all began when he was trying to visit a client in jail on Tuesday. He went into a visiting room -- not knowing he would be trapped in there for hours.

Patiently waiting inside a locked visiting room, Lopez said he didn’t think anything unusual until a half hour passed and his client still hadn’t been brought down to him.

“I know it takes a while to get the people, so I’m patient,” said Lopez while recalling the ordeal. “I don’t have my cellphone with me because the policy is you can’t use a cellphone inside the jail.”

At that point, Lopez said he tried to contact the guards through an intercom system inside the visiting room.

“So, I press the intercom button and nothing. I press it again,  and it doesn’t work,” he explained.

A half-hour soon turns into an hour.

"At that time, I'm really mad, and I'm thinking, ‘How can they forget about me?’ So, I start hitting the door really loud to get someone to let me out."

Two hours go by. All the while, Lopez is screaming while pounding on the door.

He finally accepts the strong possibility that he'll be sleeping on the cold concrete floor.

"I have a sweater and a jacket, and I take off my sweater and I try to use it as a pillow," he said.

Lopez thinks about Daniel Chong, a UCSD student who was left inside a Kearny Mesa holding cell last April after being forgotten by DEA officers for five days. Chong would eventually file a claim asking for $20 million following the incident, which he called “life-altering.”

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• Images: Man 'forgotten' in DEA custody
• Man forgotten in DEA custody speaks

“I can't imagine how you could last that long without going crazy," said Lopez.

Finally, after four long hours, Lopez said a guard heard him and freed him.

Lopez, who’s also a Vista Parks and Rec commissioner, said a sheriff’s official called him and apologized following the incident.

But the attorney is concerned about safety inside San Diego jails, saying a colleague later told him that the intercom he had used inside the visiting room had been broken for eight months.

“[What] if I was unhealthy … had a heart attack? What if I had diabetes and had a sugar issue?” he pondered. “If they hadn’t heard me with the screaming and banging … there was no other way they were going to hear me.”

At this point, Lopez said he’s not sure if he plans to file a lawsuit.

The Weather Channel

Snow forecast through Wednesday.

A winter storm moving in from the Pacific Ocean was expected to bring a foot or more of snow and 75 mph wind gusts to mountainous areas of California on Tuesday, before aiming for the Midwest and laying down a wintry blanket as it goes, the National Weather Service said.

Even coastal Californians would feel the storm's wrath in the form of high winds and heavy rains, forecasters said.

Weather.com meteorologists said the storm originated in the Gulf of Alaska and was taking a southerly course that would hammer California before the system turns inland and strikes as far northeast as Chicago and the Midwest.

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Mountainous parts of Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura counties in California were under winter storm warnings, and snow could present a danger on mountain highways, including Interstate 15, the weather service said.

Slideshow: Winter's frozen splendor

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Ice and snow changes our environment, as winter engulfs our world.

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Those on the Southern California coast were expected to see see wind-whipped waves. High-surf advisories, predicting waves up to 10 feet, have been issued from Ventura County south through Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

Up to two inches of rain could fall in some areas as the storm moves through, and high winds and snow are likely to also cause problems inland, in heavily populated Riverside and San Bernardino counties, both of which are under winter storm and high-wind warnings.

After the storm moves through California, it will take a sharp turn and hit the Four Corners states Wednesday and Thursday, bringing widespread snowfall across the mountains of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and parts of Arizona, Weather.com reported.

Weather Channel meteorologist Nick Wiltgen said that as the storm moved eastward, cold air from Canada and moist air from the western Gulf of Mexico would mix to bring snowfalls of up to an inch an hour for several hours, setting the stage for a "major winter storm" over the Plains that could produce double-digit snowfalls along the Interstate 80 corridor. Just to the south, an icy mix could make travel treacherous.

A huge section of the middle of the country is under a winter storm watch, and the Deep South may see severe thunderstorms.

By the time the weather system reaches the Great Lakes, the snowfall was likely to be minor, Wiltgen said.

However some computer models suggested Chicago would get heavy snow late in the week.

The weather service has issued special weather statements and various winter storm advisories for large parts of the western Great Lakes region.

The Northern Plains were expected to remain in the icy grip of arctic winds, with wind chills in many approaching 40 degrees below zero. Up to nine inches of snow was thought possible in places.

Nearly the entire state of Minnesota and large parts of the Dakotas were under a wind-chill advisory.

Related:

26 injured as snow sparks crashes on I-95

High winds and snow hit New England -- again

Gregory Bull / AP

A section of the previous version of the statue "Unconditional Surrender" shown as it was being removed in May 2012.

San Diego held a party for a 25-foot tall couple along the Embarcadero Saturday as the sculpture "Unconditional Surrender" was welcomed with a public dedication.

A large crowd of people celebrated the giant sculpture many call the "Kissing Statue" or "The Kiss"  in downtown San Diego Saturday.

“We are in San Diego, we have the greatest number of veterans and active duty of any community in the nation,” San Diego Mayor Bob Filner said. “This belongs here.”

Filner and a number of public officials spoke, a military band played and many couples took their own pictures re-enacting "The Kiss" in front of the statue.

The infamous embrace starring a sailor and a nurse is an iconic image of the end of World War II.

Port Commissioner Lou Smith said he’s always seeing young people whose parents weren’t even born before 1945 taking photos in front of the sculpture.

“This is the most magical place of all,” Smith said. “Whoever sprinkled pixie dust on it did a great job.”

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It made its grand return on Wednesday morning – just in time for Valentine’s Day.

For the ceremony, the theme of renewing love continued when nearly a dozen couples renewed their vows at the foot of the statue.

David Moore flew bombing runs over Germany in World War II.

He said he and his wife, Claire, remember seeing the embrace on the news after the end of the war.

They joined the couples in renewing their vows.

“It’s very sentimental,” Moore said of the public sculpture.

When he sees it, he thinks of how happy he was that they could get back to civilian life.

David and Mary Flohr, engaged in 1947, also renewed their vows Saturday. The couple has three children 8 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren all living in San Diego.

John Sax, who served in the South Pacific in World War II as well as in Korea, was very happy to see the statue return.

He called it, “a perfect example of people showing their love of the serviceman."

"Unconditional Surrender" left San Diego last May. That statue was owned by Santa Monica-based Sculpture Foundation and was on loan to the Port from 2007 to 2012.

Since then, more than $1 million was raised through public donations to bring a permanent replica back to the bayfront.

Bill Craddock is a member of San Diego’s Pearl Harbor Survivors. The chapter, one of the largest in the nation according to Craddock, has 42 members here in San Diego.

As for the controversy over whether the statue is a worthy piece of public art, he has this to say.

“Art lovers don’t love it but the people love it and that’s what counts,” he said.

An officer pursuing a potentially stolen motorcycle in Mission Valley, San Diego, was dragged down a street after attempting to stop the motorist, according to the San Diego Police Department.

The pursuit began late Thursday at about 10 p.m. near Mission Center Road and Hazard Center Drive, police said.

The officer was responding to a report of a stolen motorcycle when he saw the motorcycle and began following it.

The motorcyclist fled up the hill to Murray Ridge Road.

In an attempt to stop the motorcyclist, the officer jumped from his patrol car and grabbed the motorcyclist.

The motorcyclist continued to flee with the officer still holding on. The officer was dragged for an unknown distance until the motorcyclist lost control and crashed, police said.

Authorities took the motorcyclist into custody.

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The officer was not injured, however there were three incidents earlier this week in which officers were injured on the job.

On Monday, an officer was punched during a scuffle with a suspect outside a convenience store at Florida and El Cajon Boulevard in University Heights.

Then, later the same day, a woman was arrested for battery on a peace officer after she punched the officer at the downtown trolley station at American Plaza and India Street.

The next day, an officer was attacked by a man along the side of the road in Mission Bay. Authorities on the scene said a father trying to drive his 21-year-old son to a mental health facility crashed the car after the son became violent.

Police shot and critically wounded a man suspected of chasing his girlfriend with a handgun across a shopping mall parking lot near San Diego, Calif., before ducking into a crowded movie theater.

Officer David Stafford says no moviegoers were injured in the shooting in the Reading Cinemas theater on Carmel Mountain Road in Carmel Mountain Ranch, northeast of the city, on Saturday.

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A San Diego Fire-Rescue Department dispatcher said the suspect was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.

The owner of a business next to the theater said officers told him the armed man chased his girlfriend across a parking lot.

It was the second shooting at a San Diego County movie theater in as many days.

Authorities say a concession worker suffered an arm injury Friday night when a shot fired outside a San Marcos movie theater went through the lobby window and struck her.