By ERIN CALABRESE and ERIC LENKOWITZ
May 31, 2008
It happened again.
A second East Side construction crane broke apart and smashed into an adjacent building yesterday, killing two workers and leaving another critically injured.
Seven other buildings were evacuated in what was the second deadly crane wreck to rock the tony neighborhood in the last 2½ months.
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Have photos or video of the collapse? E-mail webeditor@nypost.com.
The colossal apparatus came apart at 8:06 a.m. as it wheeled around to grab a load of electrical supplies bound for the upper floors of 333 E. 91st St., workers at the high-rise site said. Its impact on 354 E. 91st wiped out a penthouse apartment and took out several balconies.
The dead workers were identified as Donald Leo Jr., 30, who recently moved to New Jersey after being born and raised on Staten Island, and Ramadan Kurtaj, 27, of The Bronx.
A third worker, Simeon Alexis, had his "chest slashed open" and remained hospitalized last night, said the site foreman.
Leo, who was supposed to be married on June 21, was in the crane's cab only because another worker was running late, said two colleagues at the site.
His grief stricken dad, Donald Sr., who sources said was working nearby as a construction foreman, ran to his son yesterday and wept over his body as firefighters pulled it from the site covered by a sheet.
The disaster, which a somber Mayor Bloomberg called "unacceptable and intolerable," evoked fresh memories of the March 15 collapse in which a 19-story crane that severed from a high-rise construction site on East 51st Street killed seven people and demolished a townhouse.
Acting Buildings Department Commissioner Robert LiMandri late yesterday suspended all "tower crane erection, dismantling and jumping operations in New York City" until Monday.
LiMandri said investigators "will be focusing on a particular weld that failed" on the crane, but said they had no reason to believe that yesterday's accident was "in any way similar to the [one] that took place March 15."
