NJ Construction Company, Principal Sentenced In Death Of Worker

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY — A New Jersey construction company and one of its principals were sentenced Friday in the death of a construction worker in Poughkeepsie in 2017.

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that Onekey LLC, a New Jersey company, was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay a $218,417 fine. Its principal, Finbar O’Neill, 57, Paramus, New Jersey, was sentenced to three months in prison.

The company and O’Neill pleaded guilty Feb. 2 to willfully violating Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations that resulted in the death of the worker.

According to prosecutors, Onekey and O’Neill implemented a soil compaction plan at a construction site at 1 Dutchess Ave. in Poughkeepsie.

The plan, which an engineering firm designed, involved piling large quantities of dirt, called “surcharges,” on top of the sites of three future buildings.

Onekey and O’Neill did not follow the plan. Instead, they built a wall to hold back one of the surcharges, so workers could get started on the buildings next to it.

Neither the company nor O’Neill consulted with any qualified person to see if the wall could withstand the weight to be placed on it by the surcharge.

While people were working next to the wall, Onekey kept using construction machinery to add dirt to the surcharge pressing up against the wall. The people working near the wall were not warned about the dangers it created.

Onekey and O’Neill heard from people working at the site that the wall was not safe, and they did not fix it.

On Aug. 3, 2017, workers complained that construction machines were driving on top of the surcharge, adding dirt to it. Later that day, the wall collapsed.

As it fell, one of the workers ran away from the wall, but he could not get away in time and was killed.

In addition to the prison term, O’Neill was sentenced to one year of supervised release.