May 3, 2019
April 29, 2019 – Last September, during a heavy downpour in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, Luis Sánchez Almonte was buried alive. An immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Sánchez Almonte, who was 47, had been living in northern Manhattan since 2016 and working construction jobs to send money back home. He was digging at the base of a 30-foot wall when it gave way, covering Sánchez Almonte in mud and debris. In the hours that followed, more than a hundred firefighters arrived on the scene—along with search dogs, listening devices, and assorted heavy machinery—but the rain hampered recovery efforts. It was not until the next day that Sánchez Almonte was dug out and pronounced dead.
