Jewish Builder Charged With Manslaughter After Brooklyn Construction Death

Image by Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office

By Daniel J. Solomon May 11, 2017

Michael Weiss was indicted Wednesday on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after the Brooklyn construction honcho’s failure to ensure safe conditions led to the death of one of his workers.

Fernando Vanegaz died while helping with a demolition on Myrtle Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant – Weiss’s RSBY NY Builders firm was looking to redevelop the site and had to knock down what remained of a shuttered fruit store.

According to prosecutors, Weiss ignored pleas from workers about safety conditions on the property and refused to provide materials to reinforce unsteady structures, leading to Vega’s death and the injury of two others when a wall collapsed on them.

“Fernando Vanegaz should be alive today,” wrote in a statement Brooklyn’s acting district attorney Eric Gonzalez. “Construction site deaths such as his are becoming all too common as builders ignore safety protocols and hire untrained workers to maximize profits.”

Gonzalez’s office also names Weiss’s construction firm as a defendant in the manslaughter case – a fairly rare practice. Safety concerns have mounted during New York City’s real estate boom, with rates of hideous, and sometimes fatal accidents climbing.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO