Family sues New York City utility over woman’s fatal manhole fall
This screen grab from a video shows the manhole where the incident occured, on May 19, 2026, in New York. (WABC)
(NEW YORK) — The family of a Westchester grandmother who died after falling into an open manhole in Midtown Manhattan filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the utility responsible for the manhole, alleging its workers failed to properly seal the cover.
Donike Goncaj, 56, fell into the manhole at 52nd Street and Fifth Avenue on May 18 and died of scald burns and thermal inhalation from the steam. The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court on Thursday, says she suffered “severe, horrifying, and catastrophic injuries.”
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled Goncaj’s death an accident.
The utility, Con Edison, concluded a truck ran over the manhole and dislodged the cover and noted in a statement in May that “while this is a rare occurrence, manhole covers can get displaced by heavy vehicles.”
The lawsuit, filed by Goncaj’s son on behalf of her estate, and her domestic partner, alleged ConEdison “should have known that dislodged and displaced manhole covers presented a recurring and foreseeable danger to pedestrians” and accused the utility of negligence, carelessness and reckless disregard for their mother’s safety.
Someone falling to their death in a manhole “ordinarily does not occur in the absence of negligence,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit contended that ConEd and its contractors “had a duty to maintain” the manhole “in reasonably safe conditions,” including warning pedestrians and providing a ladder or staircase to exit it.
ConEd did not immediately comment on the suit. In May, it said it was investigating the situation and working with the city in its probe.
“Our thoughts remain with her family, and safety remains our top priority,” ConEd said in a statement a day after the incident.
According to the lawsuit, Goncaj’s domestic partner, Jashar Kameraj, witnessed her falling into the scalding hot manhole and tried to rescue her, to no avail.
Kameraj and Goncaj’s son are seeking unspecified damages.
-ABC News’ Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
An ABC News graphic shows the forecast for Thursday, July 16, 2026. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — Air quality alerts are in place on Thursday across at least 18 states, from Minnesota to New Hampshire to Virginia, as dangerous smoke continues to waft into the U.S. from Canadian wildfires, including more than 100 blazes burning out of control.
Smoke from at least 850 active wildfires in Canada is traveling more than a thousand miles to reach U.S. locations including New York City. At least another nine large fires are burning in northern Minnesota.
On Thursday afternoon, Minneapolis surpassed Detroit for having the worst measured air quality in the world among major cities, according to the air quality monitoring website IQAir.
Earlier Thursday, Detroit, which dropped to second on the list, reached an air quality index, or AQI, of nearly 570. IQAir rates the most dangerous air quality index, described as “hazardous,” as 301 or above.
Chicago was third on the IQAir’s AQI scale for the worst air quality on the planet while Toronto, Ontario, was sixth on Thursday afternoon. Toronto is more than 1,100 miles from where some 180 wildfires are burning in sparsely populated areas of Ontario province.
Meanwhile, all of New York State, including New York City, and parts of New Jersey are under an Air Quality Advisory on Thursday due to the wildfire smoke.
The extreme smoke will continue through Thursday evening in the Upper Midwest, including northern Wisconsin, northern Michigan, the New York City area and across the Northeast. Heavy smoke will also stretch from Chicago to Detroit and from Philadelphia to Boston.
New York City could see orange skies on Thursday afternoon as dense plumes of hazardous smoke continues pour into the area.
According to the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System, 859 active wildfires are burning as of late Thursday afternoon, including 37 new fires that ignited Thursday. At least 109 of the wildfires were burning out of control Thursday afternoon, according to the agency.
So far this year, according to the agency, Canada has had 3,549 wildfires that have burned a total of 2.3 million hectares, or more than 93,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of the United Kingdom.
The smoke and ash from the Canadian wildfires was even affecting commercial air traffic. On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it was slowing arriving flights into the Philadelphia International Airport due to low visibility from wildfires smoke.
An American Airlines pilot told Philadelphia air traffic controllers on Thursday that ash was sticking the windshield of his aircraft, according to a recording of the communications provided by ATC.com.
“I’ve never seen it stick to the windshield like this,” the pilot was heard telling air traffic controllers.
American Steve Ventling of Montana told ABC News that he witnessed the Canadian wildfires up close this week when a blaze began while he was on a fishing trip in Northern Ontario. Ventling shared photos with ABC News of billowing smoke and flames quickly spreading through a lakeside forest.
“I’ve seen plenty of fires in my lifetime. Nothing prepared me for this. The flames exploded through the treetops. Entire trees vanished in seconds,” said Ventling, adding that he and others he was fishing with evacuated the area in a boat.
On Wednesday, the wildfire smoke cast a yellowish haze over New York City, leaving a strong stench of smoke in the air.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned that “a combination of dangerous heat and unhealthy air” will continue to be a serious threat to the health of New Yorkers on Thursday.
“This is very serious,” Mamdani said at a news conference on Thursday morning. “We are reaching into a level of air quality that is dangerous for every single New Yorker.”
In a social media post on Wednesday night, Mamdani advised New Yorkers to “stay somewhere cool with air conditioning, limit your time outdoors, drink plenty of water, and check on your neighbors – especially older New Yorkers and anyone with a health condition.”
The mayor said the city is providing free masks to help people cope with the smoke.
By Thursday noon, air quality was rated as “unhealthy” in New York City, with air quality in the Long Island and Lower Hudson Valley regions forecast to also become unhealthy before the end of the day, according to the air monitoring site AirNow.
Air quality in the Central and Western New York regions and the Eastern Lake Ontario region of New York state were rated as “very unhealthy,” according to AirNow.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said smoke will be thick on Thursday and spread across the rest of the state throughout the day.
“Distant wildfires have impacted New York State in recent years, and this week unfortunately will be no different with expected hazy skies and poor air quality,” Hochul said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are now closely tracking these conditions and I strongly encourage New Yorkers to stay informed and take appropriate precautions to stay safe. Sensitive groups should take particular caution.”
By Friday morning, the smoke is expected to push farther south, affecting areas through Ohio and Virginia, including Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, throughout the day.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting pool is shown partially filled on Aug. 5, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was partially refilled on Friday to flush out what the National Park Service said were clogged pipes that supply water to the monument, marking the latest twist in the Trump administration’s plagued renovation project.
NPS wrote in a sign posted outside the Reflecting Pool that more than half of the 58 supply ports were “deemed nonfunctioning” due to buildup and needed to be cleared.
The posting blamed the clogged lines on “years of neglect by previous administrations,” echoing attempts by President Donald Trump to pin the Reflecting Pool’s ongoing troubles on his predecessors.
Leaks and cracks in the piping have long afflicted the pool, which was constructed in the 1920s.
President Barack Obama undertook a $35 million renovation in the 2010s, installing a treatment plant to purify water piped in from the Tidal Basin, but it did not eliminate the leaks from both the pipes and between the slabs of the pool itself.
President Trump has long fixated on the leaking pipes installed during the Obama renovation. When he announced the renovation project in April, he said the pool was “filthy dirty” and had “leaked like a sieve for many years.” The administration’s spring renovation, however, was limited to repainting the bottom of the pool and installing a new filtration system, leaving the pipes untouched.
Issues have plagued Trump’s $16 million renovation project since it was unveiled earlier this summer. In mid-June, algae blooms turned the pool a murky green and the newly-installed liner appeared to peel off.
Trump has attributed the problems to vandalism. But charges brought against several visitors accused of damaging the pool have not held up in court.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who originally brought the charges, moved to drop four of the cases last week, saying publicly that evidence indicated the damage was caused by a flawed renovation, not intentional sabotage.
Pirro explained her decision to dismiss the most high-profile charge — a felony indictment against former Olympian David Hearn — in a revelatory 20-page filing last Friday, calling the renovation “hasty” and “botched.” She said she brought the case before she was provided internal Department of Interior documents proving that concerns about the peeling pool liner predated the alleged vandalism.
The public about-face drew Trump’s ire, who continues to attribute the damage to vandalism, and led to questions about Pirro’s future as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, Hearn is seeking to dismiss the case with prejudice to ensure charges cannot be revived against him. His lawyers have not ruled out further legal action of their own.
The pool, which remains fenced off and empty alongside the sides, was drained for repairs in mid-July. Trump claimed at the time that the repairs would “fix the scars and damage that was done by the Vandals” and promised it would be “refilled and put back into service soon.”
The National Park Service posting warned on Friday that the “flushing may temporarily discolor the water as buildup in the pipes is cleaned out.” The Department of Interior provided a similar explanation when algae first discolored the pool, saying it was residual growth from reactivated supply lines.
This image provided by the FBI Feb. 5, 2026, shows a missing person Nancy Guthrie. (FBI)
(TUCSON, Ariz.) — A second ransom note received by a Tucson, Arizona, television station shortly after the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie said she died after her abduction, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.
Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, was kidnapped from her Tucson home in the early hours of Feb. 1.
In the days after Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, various ransom notes were sent to the media.
The Guthrie family received two notes that were sent to Tucson media outlets that investigators deemed potentially credible and the FBI had tried to trace their origin.
The first note demanded cryptocurrency for Nancy Guthrie’s return. The second note, according to sources, said she had died shortly after she was taken and was buried in nature.
The notes were received within days of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, but ABC News has not previously disclosed the contents of the second note.
Shortly after receiving the second note, Savannah Guthrie posted a statement in a Feb. 7 Instagram post.
“We received your message and we understand,” Savannah Guthrie said at the time. “We beg you now to return our mother to us. … . This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.”
Images from Nancy Guthrie’s doorbell camera showing a masked man at her house were released early on in the investigation, but the 84-year-old’s whereabouts remain unknown and the suspect remains unidentified.
