Friends and family of a Bronx resident are stunned by his death on New Year’s Day. The 25-year-old man died when an elevator in a Lower East Side building malfunctioned. He died in the hospital after suffering multiple traumas.
The victim was celebrating with friends at a New Year’s Eve party in the 100 block of Broome Street when he and some other partygoers got stuck in an elevator in the high-rise about 12:15 a.m. The elevator stopped on the third floor and the victim attempted to exit when it suddenly started to move and pinned him.
The man is being lauded as a hero because he was able to push a child and woman out of harm’s way before becoming fatally trapped in the moving car.
While the elevator responsible for this tragedy has been taken out of service,city records show three active violations from the Buildings Department for the high-rise’s elevators.
A former president of the building’s tenants association said, “It jumps a couple of floors. It goes down and then it goes up.” She claimed to have gotten stuck in the same car recently and said that multiple complaints had already been made by residents to the company managing the building.
A scenario like this one can form the basis of a premises liability or wrongful death claim. Property owners and managers have the duty to keep the premises free from safety hazards to residents, their guests and service personnel. Anyone injured in a similar situation, or their survivors in the event of a fatality, has a legal right to pursue a claim in the New York civil courts.
Source: WLS-TV, “Man killed after saving woman in New York City elevator accident,” Tim Fleischer, Jan. 01, 2016
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