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Brooklyn-based Guyanese woman a cripple after elevator accident
…technician heads to jail
An elevator repairman whose unsafe shortcut caused grotesque injuries to a Brooklyn woman received minimal prison time yesterday to cap an unprecedented prosecution.
Jordan
A remorseful Jason Jordan, 30, was sentenced to three months in jail followed by five years’ probation for the horror suffered by Debra Jordan on Christmas Day 2010.
Because the technician bypassed a safety mechanism while fixing elevators at a hospital, the woman’s leg and arm were caught by the door and got smashed — striking floor after floor — as the car suddenly shot up.
She barely made it out alive and is now confined to a wheelchair.
“You took away my happiness, my activeness, my peace of mind, and my independence,” the now 52-year-old victim wrote to the mechanic in a letter submitted to the judge. “I experience nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks, and am dependent on my family and friends to assist me and take me places.”
She had left her native Guyana from her Meadow Brook, Georgetown home, for Brooklyn some years earlier.
A jury convicted Jordan, who is not related to the victim, of reckless assault following a highly-technical trial last month, where an animated recreation of the incident and a model of the elevator circuit board were used to explain the mishap.
“This is the first criminal conviction of its kind in this type of case and today’s sentence is important because the victim suffered horrifically,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson. “This defendant’s dangerous shortcut came at a terrible price.”
Debra Jordan
Prosecutor Lawrence Oh said that while some have questioned why the case is a criminal one, as opposed to civil, none of these doubts were expressed by people in the elevator industry.
“He made a bad choice after worse choice,” he said when asking for a five-year prison term. Jordan profusely apologized.
“It’s been haunting me. I’m extremely sorry,” he said in Brooklyn Supreme Court. “I’m not a bad person. I’m not a criminal.”
Judge John Ingram said he weighed the lack of prior criminal history and the four-plus years it took to resolve the case and the fact that Jordan was sent alone to do a two-person job.
“The Court does not believe that excessive incarceration is warranted here,” the judge said, also imposing a $5,000 fine.
After Jordan was led away in handcuffs, his lawyer, David Jacobs, said his client hopes to build a new life with his wife and young son in Florida.
He also noted that a similar, yet fatal, incident in Manhattan didn’t result in prosecution.
“This is not the forum to get justice,” he said of the criminal trial.
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