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A limo operator will not face jail time after crash killed 20 in New York: ‘Our children deserve more’

Nauman Hussain, center, leaves court on Sept. 2 after being sentenced to five years probation and no jail time following a plea deal for a 2018 limousine crash that killed 20 people. (Hans Pennink/AP)
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Nauman Hussain reportedly wiped away tears as families of the victims of the deadliest U.S. transportation disaster in a decade faced him during a Thursday sentencing hearing.

Hussain, 31, operated the limousine company that managed a vehicle that was carrying 17 passengers to a 30th birthday party in October 2018. The vehicle hurtled down a hill in rural Schoharie in Upstate New York before crashing into a ditch, killing every passenger, the driver and two other people caught in the limo’s deadly path.

Family members spent about three hours talking about their lost loved ones in a makeshift courtroom at a Schoharie high school gymnasium on Thursday. Hussain agreed to a plea deal and will not face jail time. After the hearing, Jill Perez — who lost her son Matthew Coons in the crash — told reporters there was not “enough justice for our children.”

“Our children deserve more than that,” she said.

In the days after the wreck, allegations surfaced that the limousine company had ignored warnings from state regulators and failed to decommission the faulty vehicle after an inspection identified brake problems. Police arrested Hussain, then 28, the operator of Prestige Limousine, four days after the crash and charged him with 20 counts each of manslaughter and negligent homicide.

Nearly three years later, after the trial was delayed by the pandemic, Hussain pleaded guilty on Thursday to the negligent homicide charges and was sentenced to five years of probation and 1,000 hours of community service. He was also barred from working in the commercial transportation business until the end of his probation, according to the plea agreement.

Limo company operator charged with criminally negligent homicide in New York crash that killed 20

The crash sparked a statewide push for more stringent regulations for limousine companies. Former governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed several safety bills in February 2020 that required limousines to install more seat belts and mandated that drivers who ferry nine or more passengers carry a specialized license.

The plea agreement accepted by the court on Thursday aimed to avoid a painful trial for the victims’ families. Most of the victims, who were headed to celebrate a birthday at a local brewery, knew one another. The group included four sisters from one family, two brothers from another and several married couples.

Some surviving relatives gave emotional statements during Thursday’s court hearing, the Democrat and Chronicle reported.

The mother of a 24-year-old who died in the crash detailed how distraught she was after losing her daughter Savannah Bursese, as Hussain listened from his seat.

“Although I would never wish you dead, I do wish you to suffer a life of pure hell like I do and like all the family members do,” Kim Marie Bursese told Hussain, the newspaper reported.

The judge presiding over the case admitted that many people might view Hussain’s sentence as too lenient, but he pointed to facts that had emerged over the last three years that could have created doubt for a jury.

“It just does not seem right that 20 people lost their life and the sentence is probation and community service,” Schoharie Supreme and County Court Judge George Bartlett III said, the Democrat and Chronicle reported. “But there are factual issues with regard to the defendant’s guilt.”

Last September, the National Transportation Safety Board found that state regulators shouldered some of the blame for the fatal collision. The NTSB ruled that the New York State Department of Transportation knew about multiple violations involving Prestige Limousine but did little to stop the company from continuing to use a vehicle with corroded brakes.

Despite those issues, federal investigators determined Prestige Limousine’s “egregious disregard for safety” probably caused the crash, the Associated Press reported.

Hussain’s plea agreement detailed how he had taken the limousine to a repair shop and asked the mechanics to check the brakes about five months before the collision. The mechanics performed some maintenance, flushing and replacing the brake fluid, but did not replace the corroded parts.

According to the plea agreement, federal investigators found the repair shop to be of “questionable quality,” adding that it performed “inadequate inspections of the crash limousine that failed to detect serious safety deficiencies before the crash.”

The agreement also said that Hussain missed a required state inspection that likely would have identified the “catastrophic brake failure” that caused the crash.

A lawyer for Hussain said the sentence was fair given the facts of the case.

“I completely understand the feelings of the victims families,” Joe Tacopina, a lawyer representing Hussain, told The Washington Post in an email. “Their pain is unimaginable. But as the court laid out in the plea agreement, there were many other factors that were responsible for this horrific tragedy. Today’s non-jail resolution was the appropriate one based on the facts despite the raw emotions.”

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