A Staten Island cemetery is being sued by a New York City family after a 2,000-pound headstone collapsed on a laborer who was tending graves nearby, killing her.
According to court filings, Elvira Navarro, a mother of five, was tending graves at the Baron Hirsch Cemetery with her son Anthony Rosales in October 2021 when the large burial monument fell on her.
Mother-of-five Killed by Falling Gravestone in New York
She was airlifted to Richmond University Medical Center, where she died later that day from her injuries. The incident's details are sketchy since it's unknown how the deceased died or where it happened in the 80-acre cemetery.
According to the complaint, Navarro and her son were both engaged by a third party to protect the Staten Island burial cemetery. Her family has now filed a lawsuit in Manhattan court against the Baron Hirsch Cemetery Association, accusing it of failing to provide a safe working environment for its employees at the historic Jewish cemetery, which was founded in 1899 and is home to many Holocaust survivors. It is demanding undisclosed monetary compensation.
The lawsuit claims the cemetery of creating, permitting, and enabling the cemetery to develop and remain in a dangerous, hazardous, and trap-like state. Rosales' mental and physical health was also allegedly negatively impacted by his mother's death, which he saw, resulting in serious and irreversible injuries, a nervous system shock, psychological trauma, and terrible physical agony and emotional misery, Daily Mail reported.
According to the Staten Island Advance, the Jewish cemetery, which was founded in 1899, contains roughly 500 plots, is home to many Holocaust survivors, and has been vandalized for years.
Rabbi Andrew Schultz, executive director of the Community Alliance for Jewish-Affiliated Cemeteries, or CAJAC, an organization that helped clean up roughly four acres of the poison ivy-infested cemetery about a decade ago, said, "I'm saddened to know that news."
Large gravestones may be dangerous for a variety of reasons, including crumbling foundations, he explained. Members of the prominent Newhouse publishing family, American theatrical producer Joseph Papp, who died in 1991, composer Elliot Willensky, and Grand Rabbi Yeshaya Steiner, who died in 1925 and whose burial still attracts hundreds of visitors, are among the notables interred at Baron Hirsch, as per New York Post.
Case Is One of Unheard Stories of Deaths in Cemeteries
Several notable persons, including Rabbi Yehuda Tzvi "Herman" Steiner, acclaimed theater director Joseph Papp, Medal of Honor and Purple Heart recipient William Shemin, and members of the Newhouse publishing family, are buried at the cemetery.
The cemetery, which is almost 125 years old, is also home to the graves of some Holocaust survivors. It was formerly the subject of restoration efforts due to worries about the site's disrepair.
Navarro, who is listed in public records as a Port Richmond resident, was seen clearing leaves at the cemetery during a 2015 Advance/SILive.com visit. The manner and location of the deadly occurrence are unknown at this time.
It is not uncommon for people to die at cemeteries. A cemetery worker on Long Island was killed a year ago when the grave he was excavating fell on him. Rodwin Allicock, 42, was slain at the bottom of a 7-foot-deep grave at Mount Sinai's Washington Memorial Park, as per Silive.
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