A construction company owner, convicted in May for criminally negligent homicide after a stone fence fatally collapsed on a 5-year-old girl in August 2019, was sentenced to six months in jail and five years of probation on September 18. The child, Alysson Pinto-Chaumana, was with her mother and several friends visiting a friend in Bushwick, Brooklyn when the incident occurred.
Pinto-Chuamana was waiting by the gate of an enclosed patio connected to a granite wall. The wall had six heavy stone pillars in the middle and stone plates on top, both of which suddenly fell inward onto Pinto-Chaumana, crushing her skull.
The defendants were 48-year-old Nadeem Anwar and his company City Wide Construction and Renovations, Inc. Anwar was a licensed contractor and had been hired to renovate the facade of the property and build a wall in September 2018. However, he was licensed in Nassau County and was not authorized to file for work permits with the NYC Department of Buildings. As a result, he had another contractor file the permit for the work on the facade of the building, but did not file for the building of the wall, which was required.
Anwar failed to add steel reinforcements to the wall and also did not have a licensed engineer or architect conduct a post-construction analysis of the wall’s integrity, both city requirements. A DOB engineer who responded to the collapse of the wall stated that, in addition to not having the steel bar reinforcements, there was no engineer-grade adhesive to secure all the components. Consequently, the wall was relying on a combination of gravity and its own weight to stay up, a violation of New York City’s building code.
Anwar was sentenced by Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. In addition, his company received a fine of $5000. His conviction, decided by a bench trial, included criminally negligent homicide, first-degree offering a false instrument for filing and second-degree falsifying business records.
