The family of a Manhattan parking lot manager killed in a collapse last year claims the property’s owner “put profits ahead of safety” and packed too many cars into the lot, leading to structural defects. ing.
Willis Moore, 59, was injured on April 18, 2023, when the parking lot caved in and trapped five people inside the four-story Little Man Parking facility on Ann Street in Lower Manhattan. , dozens of cars were destroyed and tragically killed.
Mr. Moore’s brother Ian Moore and his daughter Brittany Moore, an NYPD officer, said last week that property managers negligently parked “more vehicles than would be reasonably safe” at a 100-year-old Manhattan building. The company sued the facility’s owner for unspecified damages for allowing the facility to do so. The Supreme Court case argues:
The facility had been cited by the city’s Department of Buildings for “numerous violations” and structural problems, including six undisclosed complaints about “deflected beams and cracked concrete.” The filing alleges that
One of the alleged violations was a “Class 1 hazardous violation” after inspectors found cracks in the first floor ceiling slab — “same as the one that collapsed on April 18, 2023. slab,” court documents allege.
“The building did not make any remediation of the hazardous conditions referenced,” the lawsuit charges. “As a result of this completely preventable garage collapse, six children lost their father, a mother lost her son, and several siblings lost their siblings.”
Moore, who had worked in the garage for 20 years, was finishing up work at about 4:30 p.m. that day when the collapse occurred at about 4:10 p.m.
“We believe that the owners of the garage put profit over people,” family lawyer Benedict Morelli said in a statement. “This incident could have been completely prevented if the defendants had taken the correct action and repaired the garage in accordance with instructions from safety authorities.”
Matthew McDermott
Moore’s daughter Brittany, who was pregnant at the time of Moore’s death, cried at the funeral, thinking about the fact that her father would never be able to see his granddaughter.
She also remembered the last time she spoke to her father and regretted not telling him how much she loved him.
“If I knew it was the last time, [we spoke]I would have told you how much I loved you, even if you made fun of it because you didn’t like that mush,” she said in her eulogy.
Garage employee Pierre Vancor told the Post last year that he and his co-workers had seen large cracks in the structure and “always knew this was going to happen.” . And Vancol said Willis also spoke of alarming signs that the building was unsafe.
In the wake of Moore’s death, the DOB cracked down on unsafe parking, forcing seven parking lots to be partially or completely cleared in the month following the tragedy.
At Thursday’s City Council hearing, DOB Secretary Jimmy Oddo gave an update on the department’s investigation into the cause of the collapse.
AP
Oddo said the report’s preliminary findings indicate that overloading the building was not the cause of the collapse, but declined to comment further and instead submitted the final report to the District Attorney’s Office. told the committee.
Oddo said the report likely won’t be released until this summer.
Odd also said that to avoid such collapses in the future, the DOB needs to find the “financial means” to establish a team within the agency that uses predictive analytics to identify problem buildings before they collapse. he told parliament.
zumapress.com
“To a large degree, we are a complaint-based agency…we need to release aggressive groups,” Oddo testified.
Owner Alan Hennick and Little Man Parking did not respond to requests for comment. No work number could be found for co-owner Jeffrey Hennick.
