Dive Brief:
- In the borough’s first case surrounding criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter charges related to a construction jobsite fatality, the Bronx District Attorney’s office has charged three contractors, while a fourth was charged with fraud in relation to the 2019 death of a worker who was crushed by falling cinder blocks on a jobsite.
- An investigation by the office of DA Darcel D. Clark and the New York City Department of Investigation found that the defendants allegedly committed fraud to obtain a permit for which they were not qualified, paid a superintendent for the use of his credentials despite the fact he never visited the site and conducted work on a $1.2 million, eight-unit residential building without a qualified supervisor.
- On Aug. 27, 2019, workers lifted nearly 1 ton of materials to a third-floor work platform with improperly secured joists, which then broke. Materials fell onto workers below, seriously injuring several of them and killing 46-year-old Segundo Manuel Huerta Mayancela.
Dive Insight:
Defendants in the case include:
- Augustin Adesanmi, owner of Favored Design and Construction. He is charged with second degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and second degree grand larceny.
- Akhlak Choudhary, owner of Pioneer General Construction, general contractor on the project. He is charged with criminally negligent homicide and four counts of offering a false instrument for filing.
- Abazi Okoro, 66, owner of Linzi Construction, superintendent on the project. He is charged with criminally negligent homicide.
- Fato Mustafaj, 64, of Favored Designs. He is charged with second degree grand larceny.
In 2019, developer Atin Batra entered an agreement to pay Favored Design to construct the residential building on a vacant lot he owned at 94 East 208th Street. Adesanmi and Mustafaj allegedly claimed the contractor was qualified and would file necessary documents for permits and proof of insurance.
Favored Design did not have the qualifications under the city’s building code, so they enlisted Choudhary and allegedly filed four notarized documents with false information in his name to procure the permit.
Okoro was allegedly paid $3,000 for the use of his credentials to satisfy a city requirement that a GC appoint a superintendent to visit the site daily. He allegedly never visited the site.
Clark added that the conditions in the case are part of why the state enacted Carlos’ Law, which elevates the corporate fine for a felony from a worker death or injury to a minimum of $500,000 and a maximum of $1 million, and the fine for a misdemeanor to a minimum of $300,000 and a maximum of $500,000. Before, companies could face max fines of $10,000 and $5,000 for felonies and misdemeanors, respectively.
Nevertheless, the case predates the statute, Clark said, so the newly passed law will not apply.
“Workers are not expendable. Along with our partners at the Department of Investigation, we will hold anyone accountable for putting workers at risk in an already hazardous profession,” Clark said in the release.