A mechanic was hit with criminal charges this week in the death of his coworker who was crushed by an elevator that plunged six stories in a Bronx apartment building two years ago.
Peter Milatz, 67, is accused of disregarding safety protocols that could have avoided the disaster which killed 25-year-old apprentice mechanic Joseph Rosa on Feb. 18, 2021, prosecutors said Tuesday.
“Jobs in this field can be extremely dangerous, and workers must be protected,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said in a statement. “If safety measures had been followed, the victim would still be alive today.”
The day of the accident, Milatz and Rosa were replacing the steel roping that runs between the elevator and its counterweight in an apartment building on East Clarke Place in Mount Eden just after 10 a.m., authorities said.
Milatz, the senior mechanic, sent Rosa into the elevator shaft pit to secure the counterweight and cut the cable with a small saw.
But there was a problem. Two weeks earlier, Milatz allegedly removed the system’s governor — which would have triggered the brakes during a freefall — so he could replace it.
When the new piece didn’t fit, Milatz simply moved on instead of reinstalling the old one, prosecutors charged.
Milatz also allegedly didn’t “hang” the elevator, which would have suspended chains and locked its brake, the release said. That too would have halted the elevator’s descent.
Lacking these safety measures, the elevator careened six stories to the ground when the recently-married Champion Elevator employee cut the rope.
“I saw him — he was dead down at the bottom of the shaft,” a building resident told The Post at the time. “His body was crushed.”
Police and firefighters pulled the pinned Rosa from the shaft, and EMS rushed him to the Bronx Lebanon Hospital. But doctors could not save him.
Milatz, of Orange County, NY, was charged with criminally negligent homicide for the accident. He was arraigned Tuesday before Bronx Supreme Court Justice George Villegas, who granted supervised release and told to return to court June 8.
Each year, about 31 people die and 17,000 are seriously injured after accidents involving elevators and escalators, according to a September 2013 study conducted by the Center for Construction Research and Training.
Half of those annual deaths are attributed to people working in or near the elevators, the study added.
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