Elevator mishap kills two

Residents of a LeFrak City apartment building continued to ride an elevator for almost forty hours not realizing that two men had plummeted to their deaths and lay at the bottom of the shaft.
The men, who were half-brothers, Julian, 25 and Leslie Jones, 23, were caught on a security videotape roughhousing with each other and are thought to have rammed against the elevator door forcing it open and causing them to tumble to their deaths.
Police believe that the two young men had driven a friend home after a party and accompanied the friend to the 11th floor of the building located at 96-4 57th Avenue in Corona where they horsed around and aggressively manhandled each other.
According to police, the accident occurred in the early hours of Saturday, February 3. The elevator, one of three in the building was reported as broken between 8:30 and 9 a.m. Sunday, February 4.
According to Charles Mehlman of Midstate Management, the company that manages LeFrak City, someone on the 11th floor must have called the elevator, but found it would not open due to the doors being compromised by the force of the fighting brothers. Repair crews were called and the elevator was repaired and put back into service at about 1 p.m. on Sunday.
It was not until 5 p.m., when an anonymous person walked up to security in the building and reported that there were two bodies at the bottom of the shaft that authorities were alerted.
Police responding to a call of two unconscious men in an elevator shaft were confronted by the gruesome sight of the two men’s bodies. The brothers were pronounced dead on arrival. The Medical Examiner’s office ruled that deaths as accidental on Monday, February 5.
“How did this person know they were there?” Mehlman asked, “The repair crew couldn’t see them, no one could. If it wasn’t for the tip the bodies wouldn’t have been discovered until the next scheduled cleaning, or until the tenants complained of the stink.”
Mehlman said that although no charges would be filed, there was an ongoing investigation to discover the identity of the person reporting the bodies to the building security office. “We think it’s someone on the building,” he said.
Neither brother lived at LeFrak City; Julian was from St. Albans and Leslie lived in Brooklyn.