Limousine company operator is charged
Police LATHAM, N.Y. — charged a limousine service operator Wednesday with criminally negligent homicide in a crash that killed 20 people, while the man’s lawyer said he wasn’t guilty and police were rushing to judgment.
Prestige Limousine operator Nauman Hussain was taken into custody Wednesday in a traffic stop on a highway near Albany, New York State Police said.
The company, which Hussain’s father owns, has come under intense scrutiny since Saturday’s crash outside Albany killed two pedestrians and 18 people in a superstretch limo. It was taking a group to a birthday bash.
Prestige’s vehicles have been cited with a roster of safety violations, and state officials have said the limo involved in the crash failed an inspection and was declared “unserviceable” Sept. 4. The company’s lawyer, Lee Kindlon, has said safety problems were fixed, though the state says that’s not so.
As Hussain awaited arraignment and police planned a news briefing on the case, Kindlon said the 28-year-old Hussain just handled marketing duties and phone calls while his father ran the company, though police call Hussain its operator.
“My client is not guilty,” Kindlon told reporters gathered outside a state police headquarters in Latham. “The police jumped the gun in charging him with any crime.”
In Saturday’s crash, a 19-seater Prestige limo ran off the road and plowed into a parked SUV at the bottom of a long hill in Schoharie, about 25 miles west of Albany. The crash appeared to be the nation’s deadliest traffic accident since a bus full of Texas nursing home patients caught fire while fleeing 2005’s Hurricane Rita, killing 23.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday the limo driver didn’t have the required commercial license, the limo had failed a September inspection and the company “had no business putting a failed vehicle on the road.”
“Prestige has a lot of questions to answer,” the Democrat said at the time.
The limo had been cited Sept. 4 for code violations, including a problem with the antilock brakes’ malfunction indicator system. A sticker was placed on the vehicle declaring it “unserviceable,” state Department of Transportation spokesman Joseph Morrissey said.
It was the latest in a series of inspection knocks for the company. Four of its limos were cited with a total of 22 maintenance violations this year, though none was deemed critical.
“Those safety issues had been addressed and corrected,” Kindlon told CBS News on Tuesday. “Not all infractions are major. A lot of these things are minor and were fixed.”
But Morrissey said any assertion that the limo involved in the crash had been cleared for service was “categorically false.”
Even if the violations had been corrected, the owner would have needed a new inspection and new approval to transport passengers, the Transportation Department said.