By The Diary
Sep 20, 2024, 09:25 AM EDT
Nadeem Anwar, a Long Island contractor whose company built a wall that collapsed and killed Ecuadorian girl Alysson Pinto Chaumana in Brooklyn, New York, has been convicted of criminally negligent homicide.
Anwar (48) was found guilty in a non-jury trial and sentenced to six months in jail followed by five years probation. His construction company was also fined $5,000.
Prosecutors said shoddy work by Anwar and his company, City Wide Construction and Renovations, caused the wall to give way outside a Bushwick home just as the 5-year-old girl was with her mother Maria Lorena Chaumana in late August 2019. More than two years later, the contractor was charged in March 2022.
A Long Island contractor, whose company constructed a wall that collapsed and killed a 5-year-old girl in Brooklyn five years ago as her mother helplessly looked on, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide.https://t.co/1xZ8l22hfl
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) September 18, 2024
The mother and her daughter, along with several of the girl’s friends, were visiting a home on Harman St. The group was waiting outside a three-story building near the front door in a yard that was enclosed by a stone wall made of heavy pillars and horizontal slabs, when the decorative stone fence tragically fell on the girl, she recalled. Daily News.
The mother alerted a passing ambulance and the girl was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead from head trauma.
A subsequent investigation revealed that Anwar had been hired to renovate the property’s facade and build the wall in September 2018 and violated several rules of the city’s building code.
“This defendant’s flagrant disregard for the most basic safety provisions of the New York City Building Code led to the horrific, brutal and completely preventable death of little Alysson, leaving her mother devastated and heartbroken,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said Wednesday. “Today’s sentencing sends a message that there will be serious consequences for contractors whose careless work endangers the public.”
“This tragedy underscores the critical importance of adhering to city codes and regulations, which are designed to help promote the safety of everyone in our city,” said Department of Buildings (DOB) Commissioner James Oddo. “The defendant’s disregard for these basic safety requirements led to an unimaginable loss.”
Anwar was licensed as a contractor in Long Island’s Nassau County but was not authorized to apply for work permits with the New York City DOB. Another contractor applied for the facade work, but not the wall work, prosecutors said.
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