[Whatyouneedtoknowtobeginwith:[Whatyouneedtoknowtostarttheday:[Oquevocêprecisasaberparacomeçarodia:[Whatyouneedtoknowtostarttheday:Get New York Today in Your Inbox.]
Homeowners in Manhattan arrived home Monday morning after a weekend finding that a female employee had been locked in the elevator since Friday night, officials said.
The woman, who has not yet been publicly identified, was transported to a hospital in good condition, said James Long, a spokeswoman for the Fire Department. There was no immediate information available on whether she was injured.
Firefighters reported to the house at 48 East 65th Street, a five-story building on the Upper East Side, just past 10am Monday, forcing the elevator doors to open and finding the woman, Long said.
Hugo Martinez, 50, who works next door, said that when firefighters removed the woman from the building on a stretcher, she seemed conscious and calm.
The elevator was most recently inspected in July and no violations were registered, according to city records.
The city's Department of Buildings said it was investigating the incident, but when an inspector, Devon Simmons, knocked on the front door on Monday, he did not enter the building.
Simmons said he would have to do tests to determine what caused the lift to malfunction. Until he had access to the building, he said, the owners would be flagged with a breach. The Buildings Department issued one later that day, a spokeswoman said.
Mr. Simmons did not know if the elevator had a telephone or an emergency button. According to the Department of Buildings, elevators in buildings that do not have people monitoring them continuously need to have buttons or phones that can signal a service that can act in an emergency.
Close to Madison Avenue and the block from faithful Daniel, the house was bought in 1999 by Warren and Harriet Stephens, according to public records. The couple spent nearly $ 8 million on the house, The New York Times reported later that year. The elevator was installed before buying the house.
Stephens, a billionaire investor originally from Arkansas, is the president and chief executive of investment firm Stephens Inc., which is based in Little Rock, Arkansas, but also has an office in New York. In 2018, Forbes, which ranked him in 302th place list of the 400 richest Americans, estimated its net worth at $ 2.7 billion.
In 1999, the Times described him as "underestimated" and said he and his wife "zealously guarded" their family's privacy.
Mr. Stephens could not be contacted immediately to comment. A man who answered a phone number associated with the house said that Stephens was not available to speak and then hung up.
The incident was not the first time in recent memory that someone in New York was stuck in an elevator for a long time. In 2005, a delivery man from a Chinese restaurant got stuck in an elevator in the Bronx for about 81 hours.
In 1999, a man who was returning to his desk for a cigarette break was stuck in an elevator in a city office building for 40 hours. He was released after an employee of the building saw him in a security camera. The New Yorker later posted a video showing how he spent his time.
Source link