Delivery man stuck in elevator as cops terrorize building
By
G. Dunkel
New York
Published Apr 14, 2005 9:39 PM
Ming Kuang Chen, who delivers
for a Chinese restaurant in the Bronx, spent 81 hours in a broken
elevator—even as police were terrorizing residents of the building looking
for him everywhere but in the most likely place.
After he finished his
drops on April 1 at Tracey Towers on Mosholu Parkway, Chen took an express
elevator to the lobby. The elevator stopped between the third and fourth
floors.
Speaking through an interpreter at a news conference April 8, he
explained, “I waved to the [security] camera, I tried to stand right in
front of it, hoping someone would see me.”
“I kept pressing
the alarm key, I tried to talk to security through the intercom. I did manage to
speak to somebody, but I couldn’t understand what he said
back.”
When Chen didn’t return to the restaurant, his
colleagues called the police after finding his bicycle locked up in front of the
building.
The cops brought in bloodhounds, divers to search a nearby lake,
and a helicopter to search the roofs. On April 2, they went through the whole
building, peering down the elevator shafts and searching each of the 871
apartments.
Tenant Richard Hoyen, 55, told the Daily News, “They
looked under the bed, in all the closets. How could he be in an elevator all
this time?”
When they couldn’t get in, they broke down doors.
Troy Smith, who lives on the 34th floor, came home with some friends to find
cops with helmets and flak jackets in his apartment.
They cuffed him and
took him to the station because he was wearing a T-shirt with a stain on it. At
the station house they made him sign a statement giving the cops permission to
test his T-shirt for blood.
They kept on asking him, “Where is the
Chinese man and what did you do with him?” Smith repeatedly answered he
knew nothing about what had happened to the delivery person.
The cops
finally dug up an old warrant on Smith, which let them keep him over the
weekend, but they had to let his friends go. Meanwhile, Chen was still in the
elevator, forcing the door open when he had to urinate.
Every time he used
the intercom, a light flashed indicating he was calling from Elevator #2. But
the security officers disregarded his calls, they say, because they mistook his
accent for drunkenness.
The cops didn’t physically inspect the
elevators, but looked at TV monitors, which produce a small, poor-quality image
and don’t cover the whole space.
Finally, after more than three
days, main tenance workers responded to cries from the elevator and called the
fire department, which lowered it to the lobby and took Chen to Montefiore
Hospital. He was treated for dehydration and released.
The cops were so
embarrassed that they told the press Chen was “illegal” and probably
had been held by the people who smuggled him into the country, since there was
no urine in the elevator. Releasing this information is against city policy, but
Chen would have much more difficulty suing the cops or the security firm, which
ignored his cries for help, if he is sent back to China.
As for a lawsuit,
“He hasn’t ruled it out, but he hasn’t given it any
consideration at all,” said City Council member John Liu, who is helping
Chen. Liu is the first city councilperson of Chinese origin. “A lawsuit
seems to be on everybody else’s mind, but it’s not on his right now.
He’s working on his recovery and thinking about how to support his
family.”
His wife and 10-year-old son live in China.
While it
may not have a direct connection to this incident, the three firms that provide
most of the elevator repair and maintenance in New York—Otis, Schin dler
and Kone—locked out their workers March 17. They would rather go with
untrained or poorly qualified replacement workers, or see their work done by
other firms, than bargain with United Elevator Workers Local 1 after the
contract has expired.
Local 1 elevator mechanics have four years of
classroom training, four years of on-the-job training as apprentices, and then
are required to pass a state and federally mandated mechanics
examination.
If the lockout goes on, and elevators become less and less
reliable and safe, the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who use elevators
every day to move around their city will risk being caught in a situation like
Chen’s, or perhaps worse.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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