A surveillance camera captured the horrifying moment a senior was killed by falling masonry on the porch of her New York brownstone after going outside to shovel snow.
Dale Singer, 74, was rushed to hospital after the concrete porch surrounding the front door collapsed around 12.30pm on Tuesday.
Witnesses said the elderly woman had just turned to close the door on Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn when she was crushed by the bricks.
Neighbor Miyra Martinez said Singer rented a duplex in a 19th-century house with her husband and daughter.
“She was a very nice lady and it makes me very sad to know that she died like this,” he added.
A neighbor’s surveillance footage captured the moment the woman was crushed by the falling rock (her figure is surrounded here moments before the tragedy occurred).
Neighbors said Dale Singer Singer rented a duplex in a 19th-century house with her husband and daughter.
The elderly woman had just left her house to sweep the snow from the porch when the tragedy occurred.
Huge piles of concrete masonry covered the Brooklyn street after the accident at 12:30 Tuesday.
Martinez said the owner used to live in the building and property records indicate it is owned by Steven Cottone and Antoinette McRae.
A McRae phone listing was not accepting calls Tuesday afternoon.
Police arriving at the scene performed CPR on the woman before she was taken to Maimonides Hospital in Borough Park in critical condition. She was later pronounced dead.
The tragedy occurred as New York was hit by its worst winter storm in more than two years, and the city was covered in snow on Tuesday morning.
New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport had 4.2 inches of snow as of 1:00 pm and La Guardia Airport had 3.3 inches of snow. Wind gusts of up to 40 mph were recorded in New York Harbor and Jamaica Bay experienced one to two feet of coastal flooding.
Mayor Eric Adams closed all public schools and children were taking classes remotely.
The snow had melted by the time investigators recovered the shovel the student had been using to clear the driveway.
The New York Department of Buildings has no prior structural concerns about Singer’s building, but the FDNY has now requested a structural stability inspection due to the building “shaking/vibrating.”
The snow stopped around 1:00 pm and there were only small accumulations of snow as office workers headed home from Manhattan this afternoon.
The fatal brick collapse in Brooklyn comes after pedestrians were lucky to escape with their lives after dozens of bricks fell from the 16th floor of the Jackson Houses in the Bronx in April of this year.
And falling masonry killed architect Erica Tishman, 60, outside a 17-story building on 49th Street, Manhattan, in October 2018.
Two-year-old Greta Greene died in her grandmother’s lap in 2015 when a large piece of brick fell from an eighth-floor window sill onto the Manhattan park bench where they were sitting.
The New York Department of Buildings has no prior structural concerns about Singer’s building, but the FDNY has now requested a structural stability inspection due to the building “shaking/vibrating.”