Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Tagged with Bronx Personal Injury

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Bronx DA ClarkThree contractors have been indicted by the Bronx District Attorney’s office for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges in the death of a construction worker. The victim was Segundo Manuel Huerta Mayancela, who was crushed by 1,000 pounds of debris at the construction site in 2019. 5 other construction workers suffered injury in the accident. The contractors involved in the incident have been charged for falsifying credentials, flouting safety standards and disregarding worker’s protections.

The contractors were charged for creating egregiously dangerous conditions at the building site, where they flouted building safety codes and ignored worker’s protections. According to the investigation carried out jointly by the NYC Department of Investigation and the Bronx DA, the contractors falsified credentials and permits and ignored oversight requirements, creating a dangerously unstable structure that led to Mayancela’s death.

The Bronx DA, Darcel D. Clark, said that the death of Segundo Manuel Huerta Mayancela was entirely preventable and that the construction site was a death trap waiting to happen. She emphasized that workers are not expendable, and anyone who puts construction workers at risk in an already hazardous profession would be held accountable. Clark also highlighted that the case predates the Carlos’ Law, which was enacted to create greater accountability for tragic and avoidable injury to workers at New York construction sites and increase penalties for criminal corporate liability for the death or serious physical injury of an employee.

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NYPDA police officer driving a NYPD car and responding to a call for a stolen car lost control of his vehicle, jumped the curb and slammed his the cruiser into multiple pedestrians that were on the sidewalk. Among them were a mother, her 5  year old daughter and the grand-mother who were on their way to the grocery store.

The crash occurred Thursday afternoon around 3:pm in the Longwood section of the Bronx at the intersection of Westchester Avenue and Hoe Avenue. A surveillance video shows the NYPD cruiser travelling at a high rate of speed, crossing the yellow line and driving against traffic. As the NYPD cruiser approached the intersection, a civilian car started to make a left turn. The cruiser clipped the front of the car and careened toward the sidewalk. It then jumped the curb and hit 4 pedestrians and a traffic pole that fell onto two other pedestrians. Among the 4 pedestrians that were directly struck by the NYPD cruiser were  the 5 year old daughter, mother and grand mother and another man. Additionnally 2 people in the car that was about to make a left turn were injured and one of them was a 2 year old child. The two police officers in the cruiser also suffered injury. A total of 10 people were transported to the hospital. According to the NYPD 4 of them suffered life-threatening injuries including the 5 year-old child and the man who was ran over by the cruiser.

Read more in the NY Daily News

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The poor maintenance of a NYC residential building caused a woman to fall to the basement of her building after a bathroom floor collapsed. The woman was injured and is now recovering in the hospital. After the accident occurred, the Department of Buildings came to the premises located on Shakespeare Avenue in the Bronx and started an investigation of the premises. They found that a lack of maintenance lead to a collapse of the portion of the bathroom floor to the basement. A partial vacate order was issued and the landlord was issued a violation for failure to maintain his property. The DOB also ordered him to hire a professional engineer to produce a report on the structural stability of the other floors of the apartment.

Other tenants are scared for their life

While the DOB focused mostly on the apartment where the accident occurred, a CBS crew went to visit the tenants on other floors and the video below shows that the entire building is in serious need of repair. Other tenants are concerned that the same accident may occur to them as well and do not feel safe in their apartments. They have been complaining to the landlord for years about the need for maintenance but the landlord has not done anything. Leeks are everywhere, bathroom ceilings are destroyed,  and when it rains, water is pouring on the stairways and in the apartment of a tenant. Doors that can not be closed so damaged they are by water, broken sink, tiles that barely hold on the walls of showers in multiple apartments visited by the tv crew show a building in total disrepair and in real need of maintenance.

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lithium-battery-can-be-deadly-2An e-bike battery explosion caused a deadly fire in Harlem, NYC, inside NYCHA’s Jackie Robinson Houses.

5 year old Erika Williams was sleeping in a an apartment with her dad Erik Williams and his 36 year old girlfriend Chanise Anderson when a little after 2:30 am on Wednesday morning, the lithium battery of an e-bike stored next to the apartment entrance door exploded and created a fire.

The fire and heavy smoke prevented the toddler and the girlfriend to escape while the father covered in flames ran into the hallway screaming for help. He is still in the hospital in critical condition. The 5 year old girl and the girlfriend both died. 3 dogs also died in the fire.

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Traffic fatalities on the rise in the Bronx NYCAn 18 year old man was critically injured in an e-bike accident in the Bronx, NYC. The accident occurred on Saturday morning on Schley Avenue near the Throggs Neck Houses NYCHA complex. The young man who was was riding his e-bike on the sidewalk changed paths and moved onto the roadway when he got side-swiped by the SUV.  He was rushed to the hospital in critical condition where he is still struggling for his life. The driver stayed at the scene of the accident. He was questioned by the police and was not charged. (reads more in AMNY)

Micro-mobility device users need to be better protected in the Bronx

While the police do not suspect any criminality, the accident  clearly highlights that infrastructures protecting cyclists and pedestrians alike are still missing in the Bronx, especially in family housing areas where it is expected that young people are riding their bikes around.  Compared to Manhattan and Queens where 75% of the protected bike lanes are installed in the city, only 6% of the bike lanes are installed in the Bronx, even though an equal percentage of residents use micro-mobility devices in every borough. Every New Yorker should be equally protected while they ride their bike, e-bike or e-scooter.

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Reckless driving  and speeding caused 6 people to die and several to be injured in multiple car accidents all over the city. On Monday early morning, around 2:00 am, a black BMW landed on the Amtrak tracks below the Henry Hudson parkway around 183rd Street. The driver lost control of the vehicle and went over the barriers of the highway. When the car landed on the tracks it exploded, killing the driver and the passenger. The police was seen at the scene investigating the accident while Amtrak published a service advisory signaling delays for the trains travelling between Pen Station and Albany.

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the NYC building where 19 people died in a fireA door that malfunctioned and was left open in an apartment in which a defective heater started a fire caused heavy smoke to spread through a residential high-rise building in the Bronx and lead to the death of 19 people including 9 children. Another 32 people who suffered critical injury and 3 who suffered serious injury were rushed to the hospital. 19 other people suffered minor injuries and were treated at the scene. This is the most catastrophic fire in New York City since the Happy Land fire 30 years ago. A couple, Mahamadou Toure and his wife, lost 2 of their 5 children in the fire.

The fire started in a duplex located at the third floor of a building located at 333 E. 181st St. in the Bronx and was caused by a defective space heater.  The door of the apartment where the fire started was left open and a very heavy black smoke invaded all the hallways of the building.  The building had no fire escape and the stairwells that were supposed to be used as emergency exits quickly filled with heavy smoke. The smoke also invaded all the stairwell exits that were left open. Firefighters found victims in cardiac arrest on every floor and in the stairwells. Other people were trapped in their apartments. Those on the highest floor were told by 911 to put towels at the bottom of their door and stay in their apartment until they were told it would be safe to go out. People on the lowest floors closer to the fire were evacuated by their window.

The building that was built in 1972 under federal guidelines had multiple units converted into duplexes. According to FDNY some spaces were hard to reach because of the old design of the building.

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location of the bee-line bus accident in the Bron NY11 people were injured including one critically after an articulated bus of the Bee-line system from Westchester county crashed into a pillar of the elevated subway line on Jerome Avenue near the intersection of East 213th Street in the Bronx, NYC. The bus was serving the 4 line and transporting passengers between Yonkers and Bedford Park in the Bronx. A car that previously collided with another one slammed into the bus pushing it into the pillar.

One 69 year old man in critical condition

Some of the bus accident victims were taken to the hospital by EMS, others were treated at the scene.  Among them, was the driver of the bus who was put on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital. The bus drivers told witnesses that 3 people were more injured than he was. A 69 year old man who suffered critical traumatic brain injury is in critical condition. He also said he was a veteran driver who was planning to retire next year and never had an accident in his entire career as a bus driver.

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accident sceneAn 8 year old pedestrian was critically injured in a back-over accident in New York City yesterday. The boy was playing on the sidewalk of Webster Avenue  near the intersection of Ittner Place when a car pulled out of an auto shop and hit him. The driver stayed at the scene of the accident. According to the police the driver and the boy knew each other but were not related. The boy was transported to the hospital in critical condition. (read more in the NY Daily News)

50 children hit every week in the US with at least two of them dying

Children are the most common victims of back-over accidents because they are smaller than adult and drivers may not see them in the rear view mirror when they are backing up. According to statistics of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, every week in the US, 50 kids are being backed over by cars or by other motor vehicles such as buses or trucks. Injuries are often serious and among these 50 children, at least 2 of them die from their injuries.

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The building where a lady died in a fireAn electric scooter being charged is the cause of a fire that ravaged a residential building in New York City, killing one and injuring 11. The fire started in the middle of the night, around 4;40 am on Wednesday inside an apartment on the third floor of a building located in the Bronx, on Park Ave near E. 161st Street in Concorde Village. Residents heard a loud boom and then the fire spread very quickly to the upper floors of the six-story building. Residents were woken up by the smell of the smoke or by other residents screaming about the fire and asking everybody to get out.

3 unconscious people were removed from the flames by the firefighters

The tenants of the 20 apartments located in the buildings were all forced out extremely quickly and lost everything in the fire. 10 of them were injured as well as one firefighter. Some of the tenants were critically injured and a 91 year old lady died. She was among  the 3 residents that were unconscious when the firefighters pulled them out of the flames. The tow other unconscious residents were an 80 year old man and a 54 year old man. The elderly woman died from smoke inhalation and the two other men were in critical but stable condition.