NYCHA ‘death trap’
Mom, kids didn’t have to die: suit
The Harlem public-housing building in which six people — including a mom and four of her children — died in a raging fire last year was a “death trap,” the victims’ relatives charge in powerful new court papers.
Andrea Pollidore, 45, died alongside four of her children — Nakiyra, 11, Brooklyn, 6, Andre, 8, and Elijah, 3 — plus family friend Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, 33, in her apartment at the seven-story New York City Housing Authority building on West 142nd Street in May 2019.
“The Frederick E. Samuel Houses apartment building was a death trap,” allege twin Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuits filed by one of Pollidore’s surviving daughters, Raven Reyes, and AbdulRauf ’s mother, Jamilla Abdullah.
An official report on the fire found that it started in the kitchen of the fifth-floor unit — but a series of design, maintenance and operations shortcomings in the building propelled the situation from bad to worse, the documents say.
The tragedy also came about despite the agency being put on notice over “numerous fatal fires at NYCHA housing complexes in the years and even months leading up to the May 2019 Harlem fire,” the court papers allege.
For instance, NYCHA allegedly failed to monitor and maintain the fire alarms and smoke detectors in the Harlem building’s hallways, as well as the fire escape and window in that particular apartment.
It also failed to install adequate fire alarms, smoke detectors, sprinklers and other fire-suppression systems throughout the building, the court documents allege.
The victims all “were asleep, helplessly trapped in the burning fifthfloor apartment that had steel bars on the windows and no sprinklers,” Evan Oshan, the lawyer for Reyes and Abdullah, said in a statement.
“The NYCHA defendants intentionally ignored the risk to life and limb associated with the dangerously defective design of Apartment 5G, which improperly and fatally blocked access to the Apartment’s fire escape and egress points,” the suit charges. “This tragedy was foreseeable and preventable.
“The victims would unquestionably be alive today if the NYCHA defendants and their employees, [had] not engaged in a long and well documented pattern of intentional and grossly negligent conduct that constituted reckless indifference to the tenants they were entrusted to safely shelter and protect,” Oshan continued.
Authorities said at the time that Pollidore may have fallen asleep in the kitchen while cooking.
But Oshan told The Post, “We are not convinced that this was a simple food fire.” The lawyer said he’s investigating what caused the blaze so the families can get answers.
A rep with the city Housing Authority told The Post on Friday, “NYCHA does not comment on pending litigation.”