Dive Brief:

• A Staten Island, NY, construction firm whose employee died during demolition of a car dealership in November lacked the proper permits and failed to assess the building’s stability before starting to tear it down, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ruled.

• OSHA fined Formica Construction $121,000 for “willful disregard” of safety procedures by removing load-supporting walls before upper stories and failing to brace walls and floors so they would not collapse while workers were in the building.

• The company could face criminal charges in the death of 43-year-old Delfino Velazquez, who was asphyxiated when he was trapped under the dealership’s mezzanine when it collapsed. The district attorney’s office has launched a separate investigation.

Dive Insight:

A criminal charge against the company would not be its first. In 2003, when another demolition worker died the same way on a different job site, Formica Construction’s owner served 16 weekends in jail after admitting he sent two workers into an area he knew was unsafe and pleading guilty to criminally negligent homicide, according to Staten Island news site SILive.com.

The company briefly lost its license, but won it back on appeal.