Global Courant 2023-05-17 00:47:49
SCHOHARIE, NY — A jury heard closing arguments and began deliberations on Tuesday in the trial of a limousine company manager charged with deadly disregard for safety rules ahead of a crash that killed 20 people.
Nauman Hussain is charged with negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter in connection with the 2018 wreck of a SUV limousine in Schoharie, New York — one of the deadliest U.S. traffic wrecks in the past two decades.
Special counsel Frederick Rench said Tuesday that Hussain deliberately breached the maintenance instructions for the 2001 Ford Excursion, which was packed with revelers when it hurtled down a hill, went off the road and hit a parked car. trees before stopping in a stream bed.
Prosecutors say faulty brakes failed to stop the heavy limousine. Rench said that if Hussain had performed routine state vehicle inspections as required, it would have revealed brake defects and prevented the wreck.
Hussain’s attorney, Lee Kindlon, told jurors his client was not to blame. He blamed Mavis Discount Tires, a repair shop Hussain routinely used.
“Hussain was really confident that he had repaired the braking system, that the brakes were in good and working condition,” Kindlon told the judges. “The people couldn’t prove that Nauman Hussain knew or even should have known that Mavis falsified the repair, maintenance and safety inspections.”
Seventeen passengers, the driver and two bystanders died in the crash outside a country store in a village west of Albany.
Relatives of the dead wiped away tears as Rench, the prosecutor, read the names of the dead.
After final arguments concluded, the jury heard instructions from the judge for about an hour before beginning deliberations.
Witnesses called to testify at the trial included a former Mavis executive, people who witnessed the wreckage, and a State Department of Transportation inspector who flagged the SUV-style limousine for violations long before the crash . The defense called no witnesses.
Lawyers for Mavis, who is not on trial but is being sued by the victims’ families, deny that the repair shop is guilty.
The trial was held after a judge rejected a plea deal last fall that would have spared Hussain jail time.
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Maysoon Khan serves on the Corps for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues. Follow Maysoon Khan on Twitter.
