February 2019, an ALJ Home Improvements Inc. roofer falls to his death at a worksite. February 2022, another employee dies under similar circumstances. Now, February 2024, ALJ owner Jose Lema admits responsibility for one death.
Lema, 41, of Nanuet, pled guilty on Feb. 26 in U.S. District Court, White Plains, to willfully violating federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations resulting in the death of an employee.
Lema, who is also known as Jose Lema Mizhirumbay, founded ALJ in 2018. A few months later, as workers installed roofing on a three-story house in Kiamesha Lake, Sullivan County, Jose Augustin Pichazac Cunin, of Spring Valley, slipped, fell 35 feet, and died from his injuries.
He was not wearing a safety harness, as required by OSHA regulations, and had not been trained in how to keep himself safe.
ALJ was cited for a dozen OSHA violations and fined $1.3 million. Over the following three years, according to OSHA records, the roofing company continued to rack up citations and fines as inspectors from the Tarrytown office repeatedly witnessed workers laboring on roofs without protection.
Then on Feb. 8, 2022 in New Square, Rockland County, a 25-year-old employee working on a wet and icy roof, slipped and fell 30 feet. He died from his injuries at a hospital.
The man was wearing a safety harness missing the parts for connecting to a roof, according to a U.S. Department of Labor affidavit filed in the criminal case. Inspectors also found that no anchor plates had been secured on the roof. Instead, ropes had been fastened to bent and crimped nails.
Lema was arrested this past July and charged with the misdemeanor OSHA crime.
In September, he consented to paying penalties and to setting up safety procedures, in a U.S. Department of Labor civil action.
The roofer, whose tragic ending prompted the criminal and civil cases, has not been publicly identified.
Lema hired the man but did not know his name, according to the Labor Department affidavit, and the affidavit itself did not identify him.
Public court records in the criminal in civil cases do not name him. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the crime, declined to identify the victim, stating that the details are outside the public record.
Lema is scheduled for sentencing on May 22 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith C. McCarthy. He could be imprisoned for up to six months and fined up to $250,000.
