Two managers charged with negligent homicide for death of worker in NYC construction collapse

Updated Oct 9, 2018

Two managers are facing homicide charges in connection with a deadly soil collapse in New York City earlier this year.

The New York Daily News reports Wilmer Cuevas, 49, and Alfonso Prestia, 55, were indicted earlier this week for “allegedly refusing to shut down” a construction site where a man was killed April 6.

At the time, crews were working at the site, a former restaurant located along Ninth Avenue in the city’s Meatpacking District, to excavate it for the construction of a Restoration Hardware.

Carlos Moncayo, 22, was part of a crew installing a wooden support to shore up the building’s facade. Workers had dug below the building’s foundation and Moncayo was in the hole when the soil gave way and buried him.

The Daily News reports Cuevas, of Sky Materials Corp., and Prestia, of Harsco Consultants Corp., ignored several warnings from inspectors who told them “the trenches employees were working in were unsecured.” Prestia did eventually go and tell Spanish-speaking workers in the trench to get out, but in English, according to the Daily News. And 15 minutes later the collapse occurred, killing Moncayo.

The two managers turned themselves in Wednesday and were charged with “criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter and reckless endangerment,” the paper reports.

“As detailed in court documents, repeated warnings about safety hazards at 9-19 Ninth Avenue were issued in the months, weeks, and even minutes before a trench collapsed, killing Mr. Moncayo,” said Manhattan district Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.