New York Daily News Archive
The death of a New York City woman who was fatally sawed in an elevator may have been prevented if the building had followed safety inspections better, sources told DNAinfo on Tuesday. Suzanne Hart was killed Dec. 14 when she stepped halfway into an elevator and became pinned between the doors as it went up. The office building, at 285 Madison Avenue in Manhattan, had not notified the Department of Buildings about recent construction—meaning another inspection would have been done before the accident. City investigators said they would have most likely found fatal flaws in the elevator operating system that killed Hart. Since Hart’s death, the investigators have inspected thousands of elevators across the city and have deemed the accident a “site specific” one, stemming from “human error” and lack of proper “checks and balances.”