Representative image of a woman shoveling snow.
Credit: Reuters Photo
New York: A 74-year-old Brooklyn woman was killed Tuesday when a portion of her Sunset Park home's facade crashed down on her while she was shoveling snow off her stoop, according to officials and video footage from a security camera at a nearby business.
The woman, whom authorities identified as Dale Singer, was clearing the steps at around 12:30 pm outside the three-story Sixth Avenue building where she lived when a section of it suddenly collapsed, video footage from a laundromat across the street shows.
Emergency medical workers took Singer to Maimonides Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, officials said.
A son of Singer, reached by phone, declined to comment.
A preliminary investigation by Buildings Department inspectors determined that the 120-year-old building's decorative front facade lintel had collapsed onto the front stairs and stoop, Andrew Rudansky, an agency spokesperson, said.
Forensic engineers from the department conducted a full inspection of the building and ordered that it be vacated because of the facade's condition, Rudansky said. There was no indication that the collapse was a direct result of the snowstorm, he added.
The building's owner was subsequently issued a violation for failure to maintain the building, was ordered to hire a structural engineer and was directed to submit an engineer's report on the property's status to the department, Rudansky said.
City contractors were installing a sidewalk shed around the building as of Tuesday afternoon to ensure the public's safety, with the property owner financially responsible for the work.
The death prompted the Fire Department to request a structural stability assessment of the two-family property, according to Buildings Department records, which show no outstanding violations at the address.
Steven Cottone, the managing member of the real estate entity that, according to Buildings Department records, owns the property, did not immediately respond to a phone message Tuesday.
Tuesday evening, the house was blocked off with yellow caution tape. Shortly before 6 pm, a group of people emerged from the backyard. "No comment," several shouted at reporters before hugging one another and walking away.
Mayra Martinez, 64, lives a block away from where the collapse occurred. She said she would stop to chat with Singer whenever the two women crossed paths on the street. They would talk about family and about what was going on in the city and the world, Martinez said.
"Last week, she was going to the supermarket and she stopped me," Martinez said, describing her last encounter with Singer. "She was like, 'Hi, how you doing? I haven't seen you in a while.'"
"It's a tragedy," Martinez added. "You don't think that's going to happen to her like that."
Dionisio Vasquez, who lives nearby on 54th Street, said he used to see Singer out cleaning her stoop and at the laundromat and the bodega across the street. Looking at the site of the collapse, Vasquez shook his head and brought his right hand to his heart.
"I don't understand," he said.
The prospect of being hit by debris falling from a building is the stuff of nightmares for some New Yorkers, although it rarely happens and typically involves material coming down from much greater heights than from the entryway of a three-story home.
In 2019, 60-year-old Erica Tishman, a prominent architect, was killed by a piece of decorative terra cotta facade that fell off a 17-story midtown Manhattan building and hit her on the head.
Four years earlier, 2-year-old Greta Greene died after being hit by a piece of decorative terra cotta windowsill that broke free and fell eight stories from a building on West End Avenue in Manhattan.
Among the most consequential such incidents occurred in 1979, when Grace Gold, an 18-year-old Barnard College student, was struck in the head by a piece of concrete that fell from the seventh floor of a building on West 115th Street. Her death prompted the adoption of a law that requires regular inspection of facades of buildings taller than six stories.