One Man Exited the Elevator. The 2nd Tried to, Was Killed

A horrific accident in a New York City apartment building has left a 30-year-old tenant dead, and other residents say it's the result of ignored pleas to fix the site's elevators. Officials tell NBC New York that Samuel Waisbren was trying to exit an elevator in the lobby of the Manhattan Promenade in Kips Bay around 8:30am Thursday when the elevator suddenly shifted downward, dragging Waisbren with it and crushing him between the elevator and the shaft wall. Waisbren was pronounced dead at the scene. The other people who had been riding the elevator, including the man who exited before Waisbren tried to, escaped uninjured. The gruesome scene was captured on very graphic surveillance footage obtained by the New York Post.

Although Waisbren's death was shocking, residents in the 23-story building—where the Post says a one-bedroom unit goes for $3,695 per month—aren't surprised. Elevator citations had been issued at the Promenade before, per the city's Department of Buildings, and the site's other elevator was actually shut down and roped off on Wednesday after a resident got stuck in it, per the New York Times. "It's like that Halloween-night thing when you're in that scary elevator that hops up and down," a resident tells the Post. "It's really bad." Waisbren's father tells the Times his son had registered multiple complaints about the elevators. In a statement, the DOB calls elevators "the safest form of travel in New York" and says it will "[investigate] this incident aggressively." (More freak accident stories.)