Son of limo owner in deadly crash arrested
Operator of company charged with criminally negligent homicide
ALBANY, N.Y. – The son of the owner of limousine company in the crash that killed 20 people Saturday was arrested Wednesday by state police and charged with criminally negligent homicide.
Nauman Hussain was taken into custody earlier Wednesday morning and charged with the class C felony. The operator of Prestige Limo was stopped on Interstate 787 near Albany.
Hussain ran the Saratoga County limousine company owned by his father, Shahed Hussain, who was in Pakistan at the time of the crash.
“My client is not guilty. Police jumped the gun in bringing charges,” Lee Kindlon, Hussain’s attorney, said.
The crash, the nation’s worst in nine years, was being investigated as a criminal case after questions arose about the condition of the 2001 Ford Excursion limousine.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday that the vehicle shouldn’t have been on the road.
State police confirmed Wednesday that the limousine’s driver, Scott Lisinicchia, had been stopped by a state trooper in Saratoga Springs in late August after he had driven 11 people in the same vehicle. He was cited for operating it without a proper license.
The trooper advised the driver and the company that Lisinicchia could not operate the vehicle without additional licensing.
The trooper did not have the legal authority to seize the plates or the vehicle during that stop.
The limousine failed two state inspections, in March and again in September, according to the state Department of Transportation.
“The owners of the company had no business putting a failed vehicle on the roadway,” Cuomo said.
After the failed inspection Sept. 4, the state affixed a sticker taking the vehicle out of service, the DOT said.
Lisinicchia was driving when the crash occurred on a rural road in Schoharie that killed him, 17 passengers and two bystanders at the Apple Barrel Country Store and Cafe.
Shahed Hussain, the limousine company’s owner, was once an undercover informant for the FBI.
New York state’s criminal procedure law says a charge of criminally negligent homicide accuses a person of engaging in “blameworthy conduct so serious that it creates or contributes to a substantial and unjustifiable risk that another person’s death will occur.”
The crime could carry a penalty of up to four years in prison, but sentencing guidelines allow for lighter penalties, including probation.