UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A construction worker died Friday morning after falling three stories down an elevator shaft at an Upper East Side building site.
The 30-year-old man was found around 9:20 a.m. suffering from head trauma in the basement of a building located of East 87th Street near Lexington Avenue, an NYPD spokesman told Patch. The worker was rushed to Lenox Hill Hospital where he was pronounced dead, the spokesman told Patch.
After conducting a preliminary investigation it was found that the only safety equipment being worn by the worker was a hardhat, an NYPD spokesman told Patch.
The accident may have occurred when the worker failed to hook in a safety harness, the New York Post reported.
"His coworkers told me he was on the third floor, and he was wearing a harness but wasn’t hooked to a cable, and when he fell, he just went down," Fabian Para, a worker at a nearby parking garage, told the Post.
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Three City Council members — Jumaane Williams, Ben Kallos and Carlos Mechaca — released a statement offering their condolences to the worker's families and pledging to make sure developers are held accountable when a job site is unsafe.
The joint statement reads:
"We're saddened to offer our prayers of peace and comfort to the family and friends of yet another young man who lost his life on a New York City construction site. If it is even possible to make such news worse, getting it during the holiday season must be unimaginable. My thoughts are with them.
This fatality marks the 30th construction worker death this City has experienced since 2015. There is no other industry where workers would die at this rate without significant preventative recourse. The atmosphere of safety belongs to the developer, construction company and the worker. Government must be unyielding in making sure that the atmosphere truly exists and is compulsory.
While we have seen some progress in improving safety on job sites, the progress is not happening fast enough as the casualty number rises. The time has passed when condolences are not enough; only action will do. If we cannot provide answers to New Yorkers, we should start shutting down sites that have had persistent safety problems immediately."
The construction worker has not been identified, an NYPD spokesman told Patch