Crane Victims Remembered
New York, NY —
About 200 family members and friends gathered at a wake on Staten Island to remember one of the two men killed in Friday's crane collapse.
Thirty-year-old crane operator Donald Leo was engaged to be married later this month. A high school friend tells the New York Times that Leo was "the ultimate blue-collar guy."
Meanwhile, emergency crews yesterday worked to stabilize an Upper East Side apartment building that was damaged in the deadly crane collapse.
About a dozen residents and others said a short prayer and observed a moment of silence at a vigil last night for those killed, hurt and forced from their homes by the accident.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg says there doesn't appear to be any connection between Friday's crane accident and an earlier one in March. He says the latest one appears to involve a faulty crane while the earlier accident was likely due to improper jumping of the crane. The mayor insists that everything is being considered to prevent further accidents but he says there are limits to what Buildings Department inspectors could do.
BLOOMBERG: The real world is, you can't have an inspector every single place, any more than you can have a police officer every single place or a fire fighter with a fire truck every single place.
REPORTER: The Manhattan District Attorney's office is looking into whether criminal negligence led to Friday's crane collapse. They're looking into whether the crane's turntable had been previously damaged and then put back into service without being properly repaired. The Department of Buildings and the city's Department of Investigations are also investigating.
