Trespassing Teen dead after falling down elevator shaft at abandoned Port Chester hospital.
The hospital still offers something to scavengers, who have been hitting the hospital at night for scrap metal, according to Port Chester police.
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PORT CHESTER, New York (WABC) --
A teen died after he fell through the roof of an abandoned hospital into an elevator shaft Tuesday night.The 14-year-old boy has been identified as Chris Aguilar, a student at Port Chester High School.
He was pulled from the bottom of an elevator shaft at the former New York United Hospital Center in Port Chester.
Police initially received a 911 call around 9 p.m. from shoppers at a strip mall across the street about a group of teenagers on the roof of the abandoned hospital.
When officers responded to the building and went to the rear of the property, they found three 14- to 16-year-old boys who frantically told them their friend had fallen through a hole in the roof.
According to the Port Chester Police Department, officers went inside the building, climbed to the roof and helped the boys to safety, while other officers tried to find the victim.
Police said the rescue was hampered by debris in the building and difficulty identifying exactly where the victim had fallen.
"It became a very difficult and perilous rescue effort that took approximately two hours," said Port Chester Police Chief Richard Conway.
The teen, who dropped 60 feet down the shaft, was found around 10:40 p.m. and taken to Greenwich Hospital, where he later died.
Aguilar was an honor student who just wrapped up his freshman year at Port Chester High School. Nothing honorable about his behavior, though, trespassing into buildings and horsing around and perhaps stealing material to sell for drugs or other things. He eventually payed this stupidity with his life.
"We had lunch together and he would sit next to us and make us laugh," said a friend, Astrid Mejia. "He was always sweet and always smiled at us."
The building, on Boston Post Road, has been abandoned for more than a decade.
The Port Chester Police Department Detective Bureau is investigating. It is unclear whether a security guard was patrolling the area Tuesday night.
The abandoned former United Hospital has been vacant for 12 years. The 15-acre property was purchased in 2006 by Starwood Capital, and has been the subject of numerous redevelopment proposals which have been met with community resistance.
In the meantime the shuttered building has become a source of dangerous curiosity.
"It's a common thing for some people to go there and see what the hospital was like or just hang around there because they think it's cool," said Vanessa Vasquez, a friend of the victim.
"Knock it down so that something like this, you would think they would knock it down so it doesn't happen again," said Port Chester resident Anthony Pizzarello.
It is unclear whether the building will come down. A spokesman for the ownership group would only say it is cooperating with the village.
Anyone with information is encouraged to contact Port Chester police at (914) 939-1000.
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Eyewitness News
Wednesday, June 21, 2017 06:01AM
PORT CHESTER, New York (WABC) -- A teen died after he fell through the roof of an abandoned hospital into an elevator shaft Tuesday night.
The 14-year-old boy was pulled from the bottom of an elevator shaft at the former New York United Hospital Center in Port Chester.
Police initially received a 911 call about teenagers on the roof of the abandoned hospital.
When officers responded to the building and went to the rear of the property, they found seven or eight 14- to 16-year-old boys who told them their friend had fallen through a hole in the roof.
According to the Port Chester Police Department, officers went inside the building, climbed to the roof and helped the boys to safety, while other officers tried to find the victim.
He was found around 10:40 p.m. and taken to Greenwich Hospital where he later died.
The building, on Boston Post Road, has been abandoned for more than a decade.
The Port Chester Police Department Detective Bureau is investigating.
Anyone with information is encouraged to contact them at (914) 939-1000.
Darwin's theory, the survival of the fittest is at play here. A bunch of teens horsing around in abandoned properties is a no-no, but for the unfit to live.
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PORT CHESTER, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — Police say a teenager has died after falling through the roof of an abandoned hospital in Port Chester and down an elevator shaft.
It happened just before 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at the former United Hospital on Boston Post Road. Crews responded to the building after reviving a call about a group of teens on the roof.
Police said officers tried to guide the teens down using the public address system on their patrol vehicles, but when officers went to the back of the building, they said three of the teens told them their friend had fallen through a hole in the roof.
The officers went into the building and found the 14-year-old boy lying at the bottom of an elevator shaft. Other emergency responders were called to the scene to help with the rescue effort and after about an hour and a half, they were able to make contact and bring the teen out.
He was taken to Greenwich Hospital, where he later died.
The vacant hospital has been boarded up after shutting down in 2006. It’s said to be fenced off and patrolled by security guards, CBS2’s Magdalena Doris reported.
In the last 11 years, plans for redevelopment of the property owned by Starwood Capitol for restaurants, shops, apartments and a hotel never took off.
Police are still investigating how the teens got past the security in place and onto the roof. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact them at (914)-939-1000.
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United Hospital has been closed for 11 years, and the property shows all the signs of neglect, from overgrown landscaping to boarded-up windows.
But apparently the hospital still offers something to scavengers, who have been hitting the hospital at night for scrap metal, according to Port Chester police.
The former United Hospital property was purchased by Starwood Capitol for $28 million in 2006. Planners originally envisioned a mix of high-end apartments and retail shops at the site, complete with underground parking and redesigned access points splitting in- and out-bound traffic between Boston Post Road and High Street.
Investors proudly showed off plans in 2010 for a development they called "The Gateway." They were met with resistance and skepticism from Port Chester's newly-elected Board of Trustees, who were reluctant to approve more residential units while the school district deals with overcrowding.
Since then, development has been stalled, and the vacant property is patrolled by guards from Stamford-based SSC Corporate Security Services. Access points to the hospital grounds are blocked off by chain-link fences, and Port Chester police supplement the private security patrols by checking the hospital grounds.
One of the private security guards likely scared off scavengers last Friday morning, police say.
At 5:30 a.m., a guard found copper pipes on the grass near the Boston Post Road exit. The copper was "all neatly bundled in 15 piles of two to four pieces of piping," along with four bundles of copper wire, Lt. James Ladeairous said.
The copper was stripped from inside the building, and could fetch about $700 from local scrap yards.
Security guards also found three backpacks filled with tools, gloves and bottled water. Police believe the scavengers were interrupted by a guard making rounds, and ditched their tools before they were discovered.
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PORT CHESTER, NY - Exploring a big, deserted complex like the former United Hospital is the kind of thing that can get the best of teenage curiosity.
Police Chief Richard Conway said he would have been attracted to such an adventure as a kid. That sense of childhood intrigue turned into tragedy on Tuesday night, though, when a formidable but futile effort was made to rescue a 14-year-old Chris Aguilar who fell from the roof down an elevator shaft at the former hospital.
The teenager was a ninth-grader at Port Chester High School, and several of his friends saw him fall down the elevator shaft, Port Chester Schools Superintendent Edward Kliszus said in an email.
"This tragedy has profoundly saddened our community that supports and loves its children," the superintendent said. This teen was an idiot by going into abandoned building at night. He was looking for thrills and he got what idiots deserve: the final destination.
The school will have counselors available through Friday to help staff and students deal with the tragedy.
The boys who saw the fall were contacted and offered counseling services as well, Kliszus said. Those too shaken to come to school received visits from counselors at home.
A member of the Westchester County police Emergency Services Unit was cut and bruised as he was lowered about four floors to put a harness on the boy and pull him up, Conway said.
"It was one of the most perilous and complicated rescues I've ever seen," Conway said. "It was a very dangerous rescue and really challenging one. I think everybody here has been touched by it. It was not a nice place to be last night."
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the victim," he added in a press release about the incident, which is under investigation.
Police are trying to piece together how several teenagers made their way into the boarded-up building, located at 406 Boston Post Road, and how the fall happened.
"The actual mechanics of how it happened is being investigated," Conway said. "I think there are few things as dangerous as an abandoned building, between electricity and holes, staircases. God knows how many dangerous things you could encounter there."
Port Chester Police Chief Richard F. Conway, photographed June 21, 2017. (Photo: Mark Vergari/The Journal News)
Conway said the boy fell about 60 feet and, after an operation that took about two hours, was pulled up and taken to Greenwich Hospital, where he died.
Questions have also been raised about security, or the lack thereof, on the property, which is slated for redevelopment. On Wednesday afternoon a man in a car from Manhattan-based Global Security Solutions was parked in an entrance to the property, much of which does not have any fencing or barriers to prevent people from walking the grounds.
Starwood Capital Group, owner of the property released this statement: "Our sincere condolences go out to the boy's family and friends. We are fully cooperating with the Village's public safety authorities and the Mayor's Office to provide whatever assistance we can regarding this tragic event."
The exterior of the former United Hospital site in Port Chester. (Photo: Mark Vergari/The Journal News)
It's unclear how the teenagers got into the building, where the doors and windows are boarded up.
"It's going to be hard to determine which doors were opened up by rescue workers and which ones might have been by them [the teenagers]," Conway said.
Conway said police have been called to the site for various reasons in the past, but said he did not know if it was a popular teenage hangout.
Police were called there at 8:23 p.m. Tuesday because people were seen on the roof of the old hospital, Conway said. He said there were seven or eight teenagers, ages 14 to 16, in the building, but police are still trying to figure out exactly how many.
Officers arrived and saw people running on the roof, so they used the public address systems from their patrol cars to tell them to come down, Conway said.
The exterior of the old United Hospital site on Boston Post Road in Port Chester, June 21, 2017. (Photo: Mark Vergari/The Journal News)
Three teenagers came down and met police on the ground and told them that their friend had fallen, Conway said. One group of officers went to look for the missing boy, while another group went to the roof of the six-story building and led the other teens down.
Police then saw the boy at the bottom of a shaft that appeared to have been used for a service elevator, Conway said.
"It was some kind of a work elevator, so that was what made it difficult to identify the shaft from inside the building," he said.
The boy may have been in an elevator machine room on the roof when he fell down the shaft, Conway said. The boy landed on top of an elevator, which was at the bottom of the shaft.
County ESU, Port Chester firefighters and the Port Chester-Rye-Rye Brook EMS responded to help rescue the boy, who was unconscious when officers called down to him, Conway said.
First responders accessed the shaft from the fourth floor, where a county ESU member was lowered down to put a harness on the boy and pull him up around 10:40 p.m., Conway said.
The ESU member ended up with cuts and bruises working in the confined space, and was taken to Westchester Medical Center to be evaluated for potential exposure to asbestos and other hazardous materials, said Kieran O'Leary, a county police spokesman.
Two firefighters were also treated at the scene for minor injuries, Conway said.
Conway said as of Wednesday morning none of the teenagers had been issued any summonses for trespassing or other violations, but he said the investigation was ongoing.