Limo crash report
NTSB expected to finalize report on 2018 Schoharie limousine crash./
The National Transportation Safety Board is expected to finalize a long-awaited report this week on the Schoharie limousine crash that killed 20 people almost two years ago.
The NTSB, which investigates civ il transportation accidents, will meet on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. to consider the agency ’s investigation. The board will vote on the findings, probable cause and recommendations, as well as any changes to a draft final report, according to a press release announcing the meeting, which will be webcast. The report ’s public release is expected shortly thereafter.
The meeting is expected to conclude a two-year investigation into the cause of the Oct. 6, 2018 crash, and what can be done to prevent similar disasters in the future. The timing of the vote is not accidental: the two-year anniversar y of the deadly crash, the worst U. S. transportation disaster in more than a decade, will be roughly a week after Tuesday ’s meeting.
A number of the expected findings already emerged in Aug ust, when the NTSB released a trove of documents that offered a glimpse into the final horrif ying moments inside the vehicle and the driver ’s ongoing worries about its safety.
A year after limo crash, pain endures for families, extended community
The documents showed that limo, owned by Prestige Limousine in Wilton, was experiencing mechanical problems that drew both the concern of the driver, Scott Lisinicchia, and the passengers.
The information was released hours before a law yer for the operator of the limo company, Nauman Hussain, resumed plea bargain negotiations in Schoharie County court. The session ended with no resolution.
Hussain, 30, is charged with criminally negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter. That latter count could send him to prison for 15 years, but law yers for the families of the crash victims say they ’ve been told Hussain could be spared prison time as part of a plea deal.
The 2001 stretch Ford Excursion was carr ying a group of friends and family to a birthday party at the Ommegang brewer y in Cooperstown. The limo plummeted into a ditch next to the Apple Barrel Countr y Store at the intersection of Route 30 and Route 30A, killing ever yone aboard, including the driver. Two pedestrians were killed when the limo raced through an adjacent parking lot.
The NTSB detailed last month how the state Department of Transportation slapped Hussain with multiple violations and fines for operating an illegal limo business. The documents also described the condition of the inside of the vehicle as it carried its passengers from Amsterdam into Schoharie County.
The vehicle was nearly 20 years old and had safety and mechanical issues that had been uncovered in multiple DOT inspections in the months leading up to the crash. Each time, the DOT had ordered the Excursion off the road, but Hussain kept renting it out, the DOT says, while claiming he was planning to sell it .
The NTSB has said its examination of the route that the Excursion took and the dynamics of the crash “indicate a potential loss of functional bra ke capacity as the vehicle descended the final seg ment of NY-30.”
The federal investigation also found that the state Department of Motor Vehicles should have known that the limo company manager tried to evade more stringent reg ulation and inspections by fa lsif ying his reg istration applications and getting illega l state inspections.
The NTSB said it uncovered several problems with the DMV’S inspection and reg istration systems that were exploited by Prestige Limousine.
Schoharie County prosecutors have accused Hussain of not properly maintaining the vehicle, although his attorney, Lee Kindlon of Albany, has arg ued that his client fixed the Excursion after a March 2018 roadside inspection by the DOT found multiple safety violations and ordered the limo off the road.
The NTSB also has made public a document listing repairs that Mavis Discount Tire shop in Saratoga Springs did on the Excursion over the years — including on May 11, 2018, when Mavis affixed a DMV inspection sticker on the limo’s windshield.
The Mavis repair work printout indicates that the limo initially failed the DMV inspection. A separate DMV document obtained by the NTSB shows that the Excursion later passed the inspection around 8:30 p.m. that same day.
Albany attorney Paul Davenport has sued Hussain as well as Mavis in civil court on behalf of the families of crash victims.
An initial, Februar y 2019 report released by the NTSB contained little information not already known to the public.
The investigative agency has since completed the fact-gathering phase of its investigation. Such probes take one to two years to complete, according to the agency.