NYC man saves woman before being crushed by falling elevator
Building has three city-issued violations regarding lifts
NEW YORK— Just minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Erude Sanchez and her 10-year-old nephew stepped into an elevator on the third floor of her apartment building on the Lower East Side with a bag of trash, squeezing in alongside revellers and other residents.
The passengers thought little of the elevator’s shudder as the doors closed, dampening the noise of parties from down the hall.
The cab grumbled downward, then stopped suddenly. Those inside, anxious to get out of an elevator that residents knew as a constant nuisance, pried open the doors. Stephen Hewett-Brown, 25, a Bronx resident and aspiring rapper who was attending a party in the building, hoisted Sanchez, 43, to safety, and even wished her a happy New Year, she recalled.
But before Hewett-Brown could pull back from the doorway, the elevator came crashing down, pinning him between the ceiling of the cab and the third floor, witnesses and the police said.
Riders frantically dialed 911 as people in the hallway tried to pull Hewett-Brown out. Witnesses said Hewett-Brown’s girlfriend was among those watching helplessly as HewettBrown wheezed, “I can’t breathe.”
“I began crying a little,” Sanchez’s nephew, Angel Peguero, said Friday, his voice trembling. “I was scared.” Hewett-Brown was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital a short time later, the police said.
For residents of the 26-storey building, the accident was the culmination of years of worries about erratic service and unmet safety concerns on the elevator.
Madeline Regalado, 27, a medical assistant, said it was just a week ago that she got stuck in the elevator for several minutes as it wobbled near the lobby and failed to open.
“It could’ve been any of us,” said Regalado, who has lived there for 10 years. “This is nothing new. I’m scared to use the elevator now.”
The building, at 131 Broome St., is home to many low-income immigrant families. It had three open violations on its elevators that were issued by the city’s department of buildings for a failure to correct defects dating to a 2012 inspection, according to city records. A hearing had even been scheduled for Thursday, just before Hewett-Brown was killed, related to a $200 (U.S.) fine by the Environmental Control Board for problems with the elevators’ directional lights.
Dozens of complaints filed with the department of buildings over the years echoed the same problems. One complaint in May said two of the three elevators had been out of service for a week, and another a few weeks later said all three had stopped working for an hour. In 2011, a tenant said the elevators were shut down at night, forcing them to use the stairs, only to be restored at 7 a.m. each day.
That same year, in July, a complaint said the middle elevator dropped several floors while people were inside. Thirteen days later, there was another that said the elevator dropped several floors and the door’s opening was delayed; the person filing the complaint described being “badly shaken up.” The department of buildings said it was investigating the accident. The elevators have a capacity of 2,000 pounds, according to city records.
The building management company listed in online records, Wavecrest Management Team, did not respond to messages seeking comment. One company that inspected the elevators in recent years, Elevator Testing Co. Inc., said it would look at its records; another, North American Elevator, did not respond to a message seeking comment.
At Hewett-Brown’s home Friday, his mother was too distraught to speak. “I can’t, I just can’t,” she said, waving a reporter away.
Emmanuel Coronado, 23, a son-inlaw of Sanchez, said he tried to heave the man into the hallway.
“I tried to pull him out, but the weight of the elevator just crushed him,” Coronado said. “There was no hope.”
The police said the first 911call came in at 11:54 p.m., followed seven minutes later by the arrival of emergency medical workers and police officers from a nearby precinct. By12:09 a.m., the police said, officers from a specialized emergency service unit and fire department workers were trying to extricate Hewett-Brown, and he was taken to the hospital just after 12:30 a.m.
Some residents chose the stairs Friday, while others said they had no choice but to live with their fears and take the elevators.