Contractor convicted of criminally negligent homicide after wall collapse killed NYC child, 5, in 2019: DA
A Long Island contractor was convicted Tuesday of building a faulty stone fence that collapsed on and killed a young girl in Brooklyn five years ago, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
Nadeem Anwar, a 48-year-old licensed contractor from Valley Stream, New York, committed several code violations when he built the wall at 444 Harman St. in Bushwick back in September 2018, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.
That includes blowing off the required permits from the city’s Department of Buildings, not having an engineer or architect check the wall’s stability after he finished it and not properly securing or reinforcing the stone pillars, Gonzalez wrote.
This led a city engineer who inspected the “highly unstable” construction — which was held together mostly by gravity and its own weight — to call it “imminently perilous to life,” the DA added.
“This is a heartbreaking instance where a young child was needlessly and senselessly taken from her family because this defendant chose to ignore safety protocols by violating numerous provisions of New York City’s building code, building a heavy stone fence and failing to secure it,” Gonzalez said in the statement.
“Hopefully, today’s verdict will send a message that dangerous and sloppy work by contractors will have serious consequences.”
The 3-foot-tall, 6-foot-long ornamental granite fence collapsed in August 2019, landing directly on little Alysson Pinto-Chaumana, age 5, in a freak accident that left the poor girl with severe head trauma.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun found Anwar — who owns City Wide Construction and Renovations, Inc. — guilty of criminally negligent homicide, first-degree offering a false instrument for filing and second-degree falsifying business records following a bench trial.
Anwar’s sentencing is set for Aug. 14, the statement said.
Pinto-Chaumana had been with her mom and several friends visiting another friend that fateful night on Harman Street, Gonzalez said.
The group was milling about near the front door of an enclosed patio at about 8:30 p.m., when the nearby stone fence suddenly fell on Pinto-Chaumana, crushing her skull and killing her, the DA added.
Surveillance footage obtained by The Post at the time showed the little girl walk up to the heavy fence before it suddenly caved in.
A woman and two bystanders ran over to free her, and authorities rushed her to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, but she did not make it.
Radhica Netchandra, 42, who owns the home with her husband, said the mother and daughter were visiting the child’s uncle, who lives on the third floor.
Netchandra had just gotten home from work and was eating dinner when she heard screaming.
“I heard them running downstairs. So I came out, too, because I thought there must be some kind of accident,” she said. “When I came out, the little girl was already in the ambulance.
“I saw all the blood. I was shocked,” she said. “I heard people saying she was not going to make it because she hit her head.”
Netchandra told The Post that she and her husband had hired Anwar the previous fall to do the $35,000 job.
The contractors had paved the front and erected the granite fence, finishing up in January.
“Everything was completed, and we paid the contractor,” she said. “We’ve been out there all summer. I love the outdoors. We sat out there. We barbecued out there. My husband and his friends sat out there and nothing happened.”
“I still can’t believe something like this could happen,” she said, adding, that she called the contractor in the aftermath and told him what happened.
“He said he didn’t expect that and how can that happen.”
