NYPD: MAN DIES AFTER PIECE OF SOHO FIRE ESCAPE FELL ONTO HIS HEAD

By Angi Gonzalez  |  February 17, 2018 @3:46 PM

 

 

When Howard St. at Broadway finally re-opened Friday night, it was easy to see where a step fell from an escape and onto two people below.

Just hours earlier, the heavy piece of metal dropped seven stories — about 90 feet — onto a 24-year-old woman and Richard Marchhart, 58, who police said Saturday afternoon is now dead.

An employee at a nearby business didn’t want to show his face but told us what he saw.

“I saw the older man on the floor in a pool of blood,” the employee said. “It definitely looked really bad, and then the woman — I saw her, she was on the floor, but she was moving, she was conscious.”

The victims were rushed to Bellevue Hospital. Officials said they were hit in the head with the step. One building employee estimated it weighed about 60 or 70 pounds.

Investigators claimed it was the weight of a private engineer that caused the step to tumble to the street. She was inspecting the outside of a building around 1:30 p.m. Friday when it happened.

“The step became dislodged. She actually fell partially through the fire escape,” FDNY Deputy Assistant Commissioner Michael Gala said to members of the media Friday. “Thankfully, she was able to pull herself up.”

A 2013 report issued to the buildings department found no unsafe conditions on the same fire escape. City law requires inspections of the facade at buildings six stories and taller every five years. The engineer site was in the process of conducting the latest review on the nine-story commercial property.

People in the neighborhood just off Canal St., didn’t quite know what to make of the scary scenario.

“I usually expect the fire escapes to be doing what they are doing: Just staying there not to fall on anyone,” one man said.

The buildings department has since issued one violation for the structure: Failure to safeguard the building. It has also required that the building’s owner hire “fire guards” who will guide occupants out of the building because the fire escape is not usable.