A mother of five from Staten Island in New York died while working at a cemetery in Graniteville when a large headstone toppled on her. On October 28, Elvira Navarro, 53, was tending to the graves at Baron Hirsch Cemetery when she died.
According to the New York Post, while Navarro was working alongside her son, a 2,000-pound headstone crashed into her. It is unclear how or where the tragedy occurred in the 80-acre cemetery. A third recruited Navarro and his son to work at the Staten Island cemetery.
Navarro was rushed to University of Richmond Medical Center, where she succumbed to her injuries the same day. Navarro’s family filed a negligence suit against the Baron Hirsch Cemetery Association in court, accusing it of failing to maintain the cemetery and ensuring its safety.
The Jewish cemetery, founded in 1899, has around 500 plots and has been vandalized for years.
According to the New York Post, Rabbi Andrew Schultz, executive director of the Community Alliance for Jewish-Affiliated Cemeteries, or CAJAC, said, “I am devastated to hear this news. CAJAC is an organization that helped clean up about four acres of the poison ivy-infested cemetery about a decade ago.
“That’s what worries us the most, as an organization. It’s the biggest fear we have. That’s why in the work that we do, one of the very first things we do is to make sure the stones are safe,” he added.
Large headstones can pose a threat for a variety of reasons, including crumbling foundations. “It could happen even in the best maintained cemeteries; you will see leaning stones,” he said.
Members of the prominent Newhouse publishing family, American theater producer Joseph Papp, who died in 1991, composer Elliot Willensky and Chief Rabbi Yeshaya Steiner, who died in 1925 and whose burial site still attracts hundreds of visitors , are among those buried at Baron Hirsch. .
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