15 lost lives and counting New York Daily News - Editorials
Mina was at least the 15th immigrant construction laborer killed on the job in the city in the last five years. The other 14 died horrible deaths, too: drowning in wet concrete, being crushed by falling debris, plunging off poorly secured scaffolds and balconies. For the most part, their deaths drew little response. District attorneys, hamstrung by weak laws, rarely prosecuted, and exploitative contractors took wrist slaps and moved on.
The one notable exception happened in January, when Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau pulled out all the stops and secured a 10-year sentence for a contractor who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the deaths of five workers in a scaffold collapse.
In sentencing the contractor, Supreme Court Justice Rena Uviller summed up this scandal: 'I have learned how astonishingly ineffectual the federal government has been in protecting the lives of workers in this country. The public, I suspect, is disturbingly unaware of how rare federal prosecutions are of those who flout established workplace safety standards, even where disastrous loss of life results.'
Frantic rescue can't save him New York Daily News