BY YANNIC RACK | Tenants and politicians joined in calling on state legislators to pass a bill that would improve regulation and licensing for elevator workers after a 25-year-old man was crushed to death in an elevator on New Year’s Eve.
Stephen Hewett-Brown, an aspiring rapper from the Bronx, was heading to a party at 131 Broome St. when he was fatally injured in an accident just before midnight on Dec. 31.
When the elevator got stuck between floors, Hewett-Brown reportedly helped others get out, but was pinned between the elevator’s roof and the third floor when the cab suddenly dropped.
Last week, state Senator Daniel Squadron and Assemblymember Keith Wright, from Harlem, stood with tenants and union members in front of the building to call for improved regulation to avoid similar accidents in the future.
“In New York, elevators are part of our daily lives. We need to ensure they are up to the safety standards on which lives depend,” said Squadron, who is a co-sponsor of the Elevator Safety Act. Wright is a sponsor of the legislation in the Assembly.
“The death of Stephen Hewett-Brown is a reminder of the need for commonsense standards for elevator work,” Squadron added.
The bill, introduced in 2011, has passed four times in the Assembly but has been repeatedly blocked by the Senate majority, according to Squadron — despite its having 40 co-sponsors.
He said it would provide baseline worker credentials, which already exist for many other trades, and would ensure better training for personnel who work on elevators.
“To think that the tragic death of Mr. Hewett-Brown could have been avoided with proper elevator upkeep by licensed professionals is more than enough reason to take action today,” Wright said.
Tenants at the Broome St. building, as well as two other buildings on Grand St., which together form the Grand Street Guild complex, say they have been complaining about faulty elevators for years — but that their concerns were not addressed by a multimillion-dollar renovation in 2011.
“I think we were shortchanged,” said Daisy Paez, the president of the Grand Street Guild Tenants Association, who has lived at 410 Grand St. for 30 years.
Paez said problems with stuck elevators and faulty intercoms have started to pile up, and added that she got trapped in an elevator herself just last month.
“What happens is, the elevator starts jumping, like you’re on an airplane, and all of a sudden there’s a big drop and the elevator freezes,” she explained. “That’s exactly what happened to me, I had my pajamas on, no cellphone — I knew I was in a bad place.”
She said she got lucky and was rescued. After the deadly accident, though, many older residents of the complex are terrified to use the elevators — but must depend on them every day.
“We have a lot of seniors here, and our buildings are high-rises with 26 floors,” Paez said. “So I’m really concerned that the seniors might feel hostages in their own apartment, scared to go out because something might happen to them [in an elevator].”
The building’s owner, Grand Street Guild East HDFC, was slapped with two Environmental Control Board violations last year. In addition, Department of Buildings records currently list three open violations for the elevators dating back to an inspection in 2012.
Jay Yablonsky, the director of property management at Wavecrest Management, which operates the buildings, said the company was working with D.O.B. and police to determine the cause of the accident.
Paez said she hopes conditions might improve soon, now that everyone is paying attention.
“It’s so sad that it took a life for people to start moving,” she said. “This is not the way we should be living.”
