Sunday 3:20PM EST: Exactly one month has passed since 5-year-old Jacob Neuman Z”L was tragically killed after an elevator malfunctioned at 70 Clymer Street (NYCHA). One would think that following such a tragic incident, the elevator would have been fixed, and such an incident would never be repeated.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Sources tell YWN that on Friday afternoon at approximately 5:30PM tenants using the SAME elevator pressed the elevator button and the door opened – with no car to walk into! Bichasdei Hashem, no one had stepped into the empty elevator shaft.

YWN spoke with Community Activist Isaac Abraham who says “this is an outrage, I have been bombarded with dozens of angry tenants complaining about this since the incident happened. “We are not talking about the same elevator malfunctioning 5 years later, but just 30 days after the most tragic elevator story in the history of Williamsburg”, Abraham told YWN.

“To make matters worse, the miscommunication in NYC is unbelievable. Calls have been made to 311, the Housing Authority, and the NYPD, and the elevator is STILL in service! What will it take, another child to god-forbid get killed?”

It is beyond inexcusable that 5-year-old Jacob Neuman R”L died in a 10-story plunge down an elevator shaft in a New York City Housing Authority building, but it’s even more inexcusable that the same elevator is still acting like a death-trap.

Jacob Neuman fell to his death because he and his 8-year-old brother, Israel, were in an elevator that had stopped between floors – with the door open.

Jacob attempted to jump down to the hallway floor.

As the NY Daily News has reported, all the elevators that hundreds of families use in Brooklyn’s Taylor Wythe Houses are rattletraps. Five times in the last six months, they were out of service. From 2004 to 2007, they were found to be in unsatisfactory condition in 17 of 21 inspections. They haven’t been modernized since 1986. A $3.4 million overhaul scheduled for 2004 was deferred not once, but twice.

Issac Abraham continued: “If a private landlord of a multiple dwelling does not fix his elevator, then HPD come in, fixes the problem, and sends the owners a bill for thousands of dollars. Why can’t HPD do the same thing here? These are all city agencies, why cant they all get onto the same page and fix this problem before someone else gets killed?”

With that question Abraham said he has another tenant calling to complain on the other line and needs to run.

NOTE: Stories regarding the elevator tragedy can be located by clicking HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

(Yehuda Drudgestein – YWN)