OUTSIDE the trim, grey ranch house in sleepy Manorville, N.Y., seven-year-old Benny Hooper and a playmate whooped and darted through the yard in the supercharged hour before bedtime. Turning his back on the children, Benjamin Kent Hooper, 32, was on his way to the house to get a pipe for the irrigation well he had been hand-digging for the vegetable patch. He heard a scurry, then a shriek: "Benny fell in the hole!"
Kent Hooper grabbed a flashlight and raced to the wellshaft. At the bottom, 21 feet down, his son was wedged feet...
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