An assistant building superintendent died Friday after getting entangled in several moving parts inside an elevator room while retrieving a tenant's cell phone in the Brooklyn building he worked in, according to officials.
The man, 64-year-old Ken Lessie, was on duty in the building at 225 Parkside Avenue in Prospect Lefferts Park and had been told by a tenant that his phone had dropped while inside the elevator, falling down the elevator pit, according to the Department of Buildings. Lessie and the tenant went down to the building's basement and inside the elevator room, next to the pit. The DOB said as the two were inside the machine room the elevator was called to another floor, activating the “hoist ropes and elevator sheave,” which somehow ensnared Lessie.
Police say the tenant had tried futilely to help free Lessie, and suffered a minor injury while trying to rescue him. Paramedics pronounced Lessie dead at the scene. The tenant suffered minor injuries and was taken to Kingsbridge Jewish Medical Center.
"He was crushed," Eddie Adis, the building super, told the Daily News. "“He was a good man. He died trying to help a tenant."
The victim's wife told the News that Lessie had been working in the building since 1992 after arriving to the United States from Grenada.
DOB records show the building had a history of complaints regarding the elevator, which sometimes did not work at all.
"Elevator is out of order," read one complaint in December 2020. "This happens occasionally for the last few months."
Another complaint in October 2019 read that "both elevators are down. No indication when they will be fixed. No inspection certificate displayed. There are a lot of elderly people and the elevators are always out."
This is the second reported death caused by an elevator in under a month. In mid-February, a mechanic died after the elevator at a Bronx apartment building fell on top of him and another victim, who managed to survive, as the two were doing repair work inside the shaft.
