Valley Stream contractor indicted in death of girl, 5, killed in NYC wall collapse

A contractor licensed in Nassau County — but not New York City — has been indicted in connection with the death of a 5-year-old girl crushed to death after a wall collapsed at a Brooklyn building where his company allegedly did shoddy construction.

The charges against Nadeem Anwar, 46, of Valley Stream, and his company, City Wide Construction and Renovations Inc., include manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, offering a false instrument for filing, and falsifying business records, according to the Brooklyn district attorney's office.

The collapse, on Aug. 29, 2019, killed Alysson Pinto-Chaumana, 5, who was with her mom and several friends visiting 444 Harman St., a three-story building in the borough's Bushwick neighborhood.

"The group was outside waiting near the front door on an enclosed patio next to a 68" tall wall that fenced in the patio and had a base of heavy stone pillars topped with stone horizontal plates. Suddenly, the pillars and a horizontal plate fell inward onto Alysson, crushing her skull and causing her death," stated a news release from the district attorney's office.

Anwar and the company had been hired a year earlier to renovate the façade and build the wall and "committed numerous violations" of the city building code, according to the release.

"Although he was licensed as a contractor in Nassau County, he was not authorized to file for work permits with the NYC Department of Buildings and had another contractor file the application for the work on the façade, but not for building the wall," the release said.

Anwar also didn't have a licensed engineer or architect do a post-construction analysis of the wall's stability, as required.

"A row of stone pillars must have at least one pillar every 48 inches with a steel reinforcing bar anchoring that pillar to the base. All of the pillars must also be secured to the base with an engineer-grade adhesive. The horizontal plates must be secured to the pillars with engineer-grade adhesive," the release said.

An NYC Department of Buildings engineer who responded to the collapse allegedly observed there were no steel reinforcing bars in any of the pillars, according to the district attorney's release, which added: "Furthermore, he determined that there was no engineer-grade adhesive securing any of the wall's component parts ... the wall was highly unstable and held together mostly by its own weight and gravity."

Anwar was freed without bail, and the case is back in court May 11.

He could not be reached for comment.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.