Worker Falls To His Death At Lower Manhattan Construction Site
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A worker fell to his death at a Lower Manhattan construction site Thursday morning.
It happened around 9:20 a.m. Thursday at a luxury apartment building under construction at 161 Maiden Ln. in the Financial District near the South Street Seaport.
The building is 29 stories high and will be 57 stories when completed.
Police said 43-year-old Juan Chohillo of Queens was a carpenter for a concrete company working on the top story when he fell onto scaffolding on the first level, 1010 WINS' Sonia Rincon reported.
Chohillo was pronounced dead at the scene.
"My brother called me, he said 'Our cousin just died,'" the victim's cousin, Angel Munoz, said.
Munoz said Chohillo was wearing a safety harness but disconnected it from the safety line because he was leaving that area and a platform got loose, Rincon reported.
Anthony Fagiolo of the NYC Community Alliance for Worker Justice said perhaps better training may have prevented this.
"You don't send cops and firefighters out on the street without any training, you know, you shouldn't be sending these guys out without being trained on a construction site," Fagiolo said.
The victim's cousin said Chohillo had been at this job site almost two years and leaves behind five children in Ecuador.
The Buildings Department is investigating.
