An elderly public housing tenant died on Christmas Day after falling and cracking his skull in a Bronx elevator that had been serviced by NYCHA repairmen just the day before.
A sign is put on the Bronx elevator where Olegario Pabon, 81, had fallen and cracked his skull.
Olegario Pabon, 81, left his fifth-floor apartment on Boston Road around 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve. He tripped as he stepped into the elevator, which wasn’t level with the floor, sources told the Daily News. He crawled out of the elevator, leaving a trail of blood to the first-floor apartment of fellow tenant Rena Ashby.
"He was trying to talk. He was asking about his wife," said Ashby, 84. "He was saying, ‘Who's going to look after my wife.’ It was so sad. He knew he was going to pass."
Edelmira Rivera, 79, the co-captain of the building's tenant patrol, also tried to help him.
"I saw him right after it happened," Rivera said. "He told me he jumped out because he panicked."
Rivera said the elevator has been malfunctioning for years. "It could have been any one of us,” she said. “They (NYCHA) always claim they fixed it and it's always the same."
Tenant Olegario Pabon (r.) died after tripping into an elevator that had been serviced by NYCHA repairmen just the day before. His wife (l.) was identified by neighbors as Emma.
Ashby called 911, and then used towels and sheets to clean the blood from the elevator floor and the hallway as best she could.
"The stain is still in the hall," her daughter Jenine Ashby, 49, said.
Pabon was taken to Saint Barnabas Hospital and died the following day. The city medical examiner ruled that Pabon died of bleeding in the brain due to blunt impact to his head. He was also on anticoagulant drugs for treatment of heart disease. It was an accident, officials said.
Two days before the tenant died, a NYCHA elevator mechanic responding to tenant complaints was sent to examine the lift at Boston Road Plaza. He discovered the lift's door would not open properly when it reached its destination, so the mechanic called for a special services unit, sources said.
On Dec. 23, the special services unit replaced a device in the lift called a regulator, which controls its speed. The unit then signed off on the elevator and restored it to service.