Woman on her phone falls down open cellar door in New Jersey

A 67-year-old woman was seriously injured in New Jersey after falling into an open cellar door and tumbling into a basement while she was checking her mobile phone.

CCTV footage captured the moment the woman was walking down the street and tripped, flipped over the door and plunged head first into the ground.

Her son told a local news station that his mother is legally blind and diabetic. While she was seriously hurt, she's now in a stable condition.

"When I first saw the video, my heart dropped. It was painful to watch," the woman's son told CBS New York.

"She may be hurt, but at least she's alive," he said.

He said this was more than just a simple case of his mother being careless and looking at her phone - she was actually checking her blood sugar.

"She regularly takes on schedule her meals and checks her sugar," he said.

"As far as I was told, when she was walking down the street, she felt a little nauseous in a sense, and looked at her phone to see what time it was."

He said she has trouble seeing blended colours and couldn't tell the difference between the grey open hatch and the concrete footpath.