Elevators, not the safest place these days? Between flame attacks, horrible accidents, electrocutions and now snapped cables—suddenly the stairs never looked better. Last night a 17-year-old boy in the Bronx survived after the cable holding the elevator he was on snapped, sending him plummeting six stories! "His body flew to the ceiling like he was in a rocket," the boy's godmother told the News. more ›

Last night, an elevator mechanic performing maintenance on a lift at 1290 Avenue of the Americas was electrocuted in a ninth floor engine room. A source told the Daily News, "He was lying on live wires." more ›

The Brooklyn man who allegedly confessed to cops that he killed a 73-year-old woman by setting her on fire in a Prospect Heights elevator was arraigned yesterday—and more details about that alleged confession came to light. Police claim that Jerome Isaac boasted at the time of his arrest that he would have gotten away with the murder of Deloris Gillespie if he hadn't turned himself in: “If the video wasn’t there, you would still be looking for me,” he declared, despite having burned half his face during the attack. more ›

The company in charge of maintaining the 285 Madison Avenue elevator that killed an advertising executive on December 14 has other legal problems: According to the Post, "There are at least eight active cases against Transel, including a suit brought by a Union Square building super who plunged down an elevator shaft when he stepped through doors that opened before the cab arrived." more ›

The Madison Avenue building where a freak elevator accident occurred earlier this month—killing one person—is set to re-open in early January. On Dec. 14, Y&R ad executive Suzanne Hart was killed when the elevator at 285 Madison Avenue malfunctioned as she was stepping in, crushing her. The 26-story office tower, which is owned by Y&R's parent company WPP PLC, has been closed since then. But Y&R aren't coming back. more ›

The Brooklyn man who allegedly confessed to cops that he killed a 73-year-old woman by setting her on fire in a Prospect Heights elevator has been formally charged with murder. Jerome Isaac was indicted today on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Deloris Gillespie, the woman who he allegedly killed over a money dispute. more ›

The Brooklyn man who allegedly confessed to cops that he killed a 73-year-old neighbor by setting her on fire in a Prospect Heights elevator appeared in court yesterday. Jerome Isaac, 47, was seen with burns on the left side of his face more ›

Yesterday, a Brooklyn woman was burned alive in the elevator of her Prospect Heights apartment building in a horrific crime that was captured on surveillance video. Police say that they now have a suspect in custody for the murder of 64-year-old Doris Gillespie. The man came into a transit police station close to the apartment building where the attack took place early Sunday morning—he was "reeking of gasoline," according to cops. more ›

The police say a woman died after being set on fire in her Prospect Heights apartment building's elevator yesterday afternoon—and they say her killer was caught on video. According to the Post, the surveillance video shows "the suspect was waiting on the fifth floor and ambushed his victim as the elevator doors opened. He sprayed the woman with a flammable liquid and then set her aflame and ran off, leaving her to die in agony, police said." And a resident said, “She was screaming at the top of her lungs." more ›

Suzanne Hart, the ad executive who was killed yesterday in a tragic elevator accident, was the victim of a rare but horrifying malfunction, which elevator expert Patrick Carrajat says he's heard of happening "five or six times" in the past. As Hart stepped into the elevator, it shot upward, and it is Carrajat's understanding that her torso was inside the elevator, while the bottom part of her body was forced between the elevator shaft. "From what I'm hearing, she was basically cut in half," Carrajat tells us. "In many ways it's better to be decapitated because the pain is over immediately." more ›

The body of a woman killed in a freak elevator accident yesterday was not removed until nearly 7 p.m.—seven hours after she was crushed to death. And the other passengers in the elevator who helplessly looked on as she died were not freed for over an hour. When they finally got out, they were "in severe distress," Fire Lt. Glenn Berube tells the Post. But it took rescuers much longer to remove Suzanne Hart's mangled body from the elevator shaft. more ›

The NYPD Hate Crime Unit is investigating swastikas discovered scrawled inside an elevator in a Williamsburg apartment building. CBS reports that the swastikas were found inside an elevator at 70 Ross Street in Williamsburg. According to the Post, the same building was targeted earlier this month, when a swastika was etched into the button control panel of an elevator. more ›

New York elevators are dangerous places to be this week. An elevator technician in his 50s fell 10 stories down an elevator shaft to his death morning in Midtown office building, according to the FDNY. The man had been working on an elevator in the 17-story Bricken Arcade building on 38th and Seventh when the accident occurred a little before 10:30 a.m. more ›

[Update below] Things are just falling all over New York this morning. First a building collapses onto a city bus and then an elevator in Times Square goes and unexpectedly drops three floors! About ten minutes after the Harlem building toppled, at about 9:37 a.m., an elevator in the Paramount Building in Times Square tumbled down three stories out of the blue. more ›

Ben Kweller has been off the grid for a while (though he's got a show in Boston this weekend), and when you get back on the grid, modern technology is awaiting you with open arms and broken elevators. Recently the musician found himself stuck in an elevator on Long Island. He filmed the whole thing, and there's something to gain from it, just watch how calm Kweller and Noise Company label executive Kiko Velez stay during their adventure in the Marriott's elevator... while admitting, "This is kind of how some horror movies start." more ›

Elevators and escalators on the subway are notoriously bad—just ask some of the people who have been stuck in them—and yet, according to a draft report the Daily News got its paws on, the MTA still doesn't have a firm grasp on how to keep them running. Which makes us feel great about their "plans" to get garbage off subway platforms faster! more ›

The city's surveillance cameras have captured another despicable crime: a man was caught on tape attacking a 29-year-old woman in an elevator in Washington Heights. According to the Daily News—who describe the "goon" as a "Latino who shaves his balding head"—the violent effort was all to get a hold of the woman's cell phone. NY1 reports that the incident took place on June 9th. more ›

A freight elevator at a Chelsea building on 6th Avenue and 18th Street suddenly dropped, injuring 21 people inside. One of the victims told WCBS 2, "The elevator it fell down, that’s it. It felt like we were jumping." more ›

Last week, a man attacked a 96-year-old man in a Queens apartment building in order to steal the senior citizen's money. Now the victim is speaking out: Alfonso Scannapieco told the Daily News, "If I run into him, he's got to fight me. I'm still going to lose, but he's got to fight me." more ›

Mayor Bloomberg's townhouse clearly has a certain magic to it. The five-story Beaux-Arts building at 17 East 79th Street boasts 7,500 square-feet of living space (even more if you include the floors of the neighboring buildings he has been annexing) and is so nice the billionaire from Boston has continued living there rather than move into the over-chefed Gracie mansion. But living in an Upper East Side townhouse does have its hardships. Like when the elevator isn't up to snuff and gets an "unsatisfactory" rating. more ›

A man suspected of attacking two women in Williamsburg apartment building elevators was arrested. Rayquan Williams, 21, was charged with sex abuse, menacing, and robbery for the attacks that took place just a block from the 90th Precinct. One resident told WCBS 2, "I’m not surprised at all. It’s a bad neighborhood in many ways. It’s a good neighborhood and it’s bad. We have good and bad everywhere.” more ›

While most of us were knocking back egg nog and threatening our parents with Christmas Trees, one woman endured a horrible accident on Christmas day when her leg got trapped between an elevator car and the shaft wall. The 47-year-old woman was dragged up eight floors with her leg stuck in that position at the Downstate SUNY Medical Center in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens. "There was a lot of blood...A big chunk of her leg was missing. It looked like someone ripped it open with a knife," sources told the News. more ›

Yesterday morning, a group of 15 adults and two children squeezed into the elevator in the F train station on Roosevelt Island. And there they remained for a full hour until the FDNY came to their rescue. One commuter, an administrative assistant at a financial firm named Alexis, passed the time by tweeting about the situation (sample: "This day keeps getting worse. I'd jump in front of a train but the MTA would find some way to cock that up too!") Today she sent us a thorough account of her experience, with video of that triumphant moment when the FDNY popped open the ceiling hatch. Here is her story: more ›

Upper East Sider Janis Spindel was trapped in her building's elevator and says the 25-minute ordeal cost her at least $10,000 a minute. On the upside, she makes $10,000 a minute. The matchmaker lives on East End Avenue and says the malfunctioning elevator made her miss an appointment with a billionaire client who was paying $250,000 just to meet with her (finding him a suitable wife would have put another $250,000 in her pockets). The NY Post is calling it a "tragic story of lost love and money." more ›

Over the weekend, a tipster sent us this photo taken in a service elevator at the Union Square Whole Foods, where "cooked, prepared turkey breasts were being carted upstairs along side filthy garbage cans and employees with dirty dustbins." The world was shocked and appalled, and Whole Foods has issued this statement in an attempt to put the incident behind them: more ›

Police are searching for a suspect who allegedly beat and raped a 79-year-old woman in her apartment building in the Bronx earlier this morning. The suspect, described as a man in his 20s, allegedly pulled the victim out of her elevator around 2 a.m. He then punched her in the face, raped her, and fled. One neighbor told WCBS, "It's sad, somebody that old, an elderly woman like that who doesn't do anything to anyone." Police are examining surveillance footage and also canvassing a nearby subway station to see if the suspect used the train to get away. more ›

How's this for a nightmarish start or end to your subway ride: Being trapped in a hot subway elevator for over an hour. The Post reports, "A dozen straphangers were trapped for more than an hour in a sweltering elevator in a Washington Heights subway station" at 168th Street and Broadway yesterday afternoon between 4:11 p.m. and 5:20 p.m. The people had to be extracted out of the elevator via the ceiling hatch one by one. more ›

According to a new study of 16 cities from IBM, NYC office workers have spent 5.9 years stuck in an elevator. The number spikes to 22.5 when taking into account waiting for elevators. We bet this study would have been really skewed if this guy was included. more ›