After getting trapped in a broken-down Bronx elevator car for more than three days, all that a Chinese food deliveryman told authorities he wanted was a glass of water and a night’s rest.

Before sunrise yesterday, firefighters responding to emergency calls made from within an out-of-service elevator finally discovered the deliveryman, Ming Kuang Chen, 35, who became the subject of a intensive, borough-wide manhunt that had police searching cemeteries and parks with the aid of trained bloodhounds, and the Jerome Park Reservoir using scuba gear.

Police detectives initially feared that Mr. Chen had become a victim of a major crime, one in a series of deliverymen who have been attacked. His delivery bike was found, locked, outside the building where he made his last delivery, Tracey Towers, at 40 W. Mosholu Parkway South, and his wallet, containing more than $200, was left at his nearby restaurant, the Happy Dragon.

Mr. Chen’s case fell into neither category, however – and detectives were shocked to learn yesterday that the deliveryman was trapped in a building that had been scoured from roof to cellar. Of the building’s 871 apartments, police officials said that all but 30 had been searched by officers.

Apparently, Mr. Chen had been sleeping just feet from where investigators frantically hunted for clues.

“A mystery wrapped in an enigma,” the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul Browne, said of the case.

Another puzzler for detectives is that when the elevator car was searched yesterday, police said, detectives discovered no signs of urine or feces in the car.

While doctors monitored the weak and dizzy Mr. Chen, who was shaken but in stable condition, the authorities were still trying to piece together what had gone wrong with that fateful express elevator late Friday night.

According to Mr. Chen’s statements to police, which were translated from his native Mandarin, he had finished making his third and last delivery of the night – an order of shrimp fried rice and curried shrimp with onions – to an off-duty police officer who lived with his family on the 35th floor of the building. Right away, Mr. Chen told police, he encountered a couple he knew inside the building, and chose to ride the elevator with them to the 36th floor.

Instead of going up, however, the elevator went down to the 32nd floor, police said, and the couple hopped out to take another elevator back up. Mr. Chen immediately afterward decided to continue on toward the first floor.

Then the elevator fell. Mr. Chen told police that he felt only a slight drop, but in fact the elevator had fallen 28 floors, police said. Mr. Chen was later discovered by firefighters stuck between the fourth and fifth floors.

Once he realized that he was trapped, Mr. Chen tried pressing the elevator’s buttons and he occasionally screamed, he explained yesterday, but mostly he spent his time sleeping on the floor of the elevator cab. As the hours dragged on into days without rescue, Mr. Chen said, he remained hopeful he would not die in the elevator.

A preliminary report from the city’s Department of Buildings revealed that the elevator’s selector tape, which controls the car’s positioning, had broken and caused the elevator to malfunction, a spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings, Jennifer Givner, said.

Though the elevator’s internal camera system was found to be functioning properly, Ms. Givner said, if Mr. Chen had been lying on the floor he would have remained out of camera range.