The sister of a musician and photographer who fell 18 feet to his death down a downtown St. Louis building’s elevator shaft is suing the former property owner and the elevator’s manufacturer.
The lawsuit filed in St. Louis Circuit Court by 72-year-old Virginia Klein of Barnhart also names a company that controlled the building, as well as a developer who lived there, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Klein alleges the elevator was defective and that the defendants’ negligence in maintaining it resulted in the Aug. 3, 2013, death of Bob Reuter, who had been moving into the building when he stepped through the elevator doors into a dark shaft. The elevator was not there, and 61-year-old Reuter tumbled to his death.
Authorities have said firefighters found the elevator car positioned well above the first floor.
City building inspectors and state safety officials had visited the building at least three times in eight months before Reuters died, but tenants continued using the elevator, the newspaper said.
The lawsuit seeks at least $25,000 from each defendant.
Reuter — a fixture of the St. Louis music scene — was the frontman of the punk band Alley Ghost and a host of a St. Louis-based weekly radio program called “Bob’s Scratchy Records.”
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