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The widow of a Boston University law professor filed a lawsuit against the state for wrongful death more than a year after her husband fell 20 feet to his death when he slipped down a rusty staircase.
Milton David Jones, 40, an associate professor in the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management in the School of Public Health, died on September 11, 2021 near the JFK/UMass T station in Dorchester when the father of three fell from a staircase that had been closed for 20 months because it was unsafe.
Jones’ death was ruled an accident, but now his widow, Sarah Sacuto, is suing the MBTA and the Massachusetts Department of Education for the lack of warning signs about the fragile stairs and failure to shield them from the public.
The stairs were closed to the public at the time of Jones’ death and a fence had been placed around them to keep people away. But Sacuto’s lawsuit insists more could have been done to keep people away from them.
“The defendants, through their neglect, had allowed the “subject stair” to degrade and fall into disrepair, making it a danger to the public,” the lawsuit said, according to the Boston Herald.
Sacuto blames the defendants for her husband’s death. She shared three children with him.
It’s unclear how much Sacuto is suing.
Sarah Sacuto (far left in denim jacket) filed a tort lawsuit against the state more than a year after her husband, Milton David Jones (right in red sweater) fell 20 feet to his death
Milton David Jones, 40, slipped down a rusty staircase in September 2021 that had been closed for 20 months
Jones’ death was ruled an accident, but the lawsuit said it could have been prevented if the state had properly sealed the stairwell. In the photo: the stairwell above
An entrance to the stairs where Jones fell. It is depicted after his death, although these signs and fences were placed before his fatal plunge
The stairs where Jones fell. There were several steps at the top
The stairs had been “fenced off” prior to Jones’ death and a warning sign was posted nearby, the news outlet reported. The stairs were demolished after the accident.
It remains unclear how Jones ended up on the stairs, but Sacuto said at the time that her husband went for a run and never returned home.
On the day of Jones’ death, State troopers were alerted about a body under the stairs around 1:30 p.m.
David Procopio, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts State Police, said last year that Jones’s body had been “sighted a short time earlier under a flight of stairs by a passerby who called police.”
They later found Jones lying on the ground under a stairway that connects Old Colony Road to the Columbia Road overpass.
There, detectives saw “a hole in the stairs above the victim, who had already been determined to be deceased.”
Procopio told the Boston Globe he wasn’t sure if there were any signs warning pedestrians to stay off the stairs, but “there was a wire fence blocking the bottom entrance of the stairs and a jersey barrier,” as well as “chain links” and another jersey barrier at the Columbia Road entrance.
A gaping hole in the center of the heavily rusted staircase remained visible after Jones’s death, with at least six steps missing, and several fallen steps scattered on the ground.
It’s unclear when the steps fell, but a November 2020 Google Street View image showed there were four missing steps.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has warned residents not to use the stairs nearly 40 times since January 2020, writing in a tweet in March 2021 that the stairs were inaccessible and that pedestrians should find other ways to access the T station while ‘necessary repairs are being made’. .’
“If you weren’t careful with what you’re doing, this could have happened to anyone,” Saunders said at the time. “You don’t really notice whether the stairs are there or not until you look really, really closely.”
It’s still unclear how Jones got into the stairwell, but Sacuto said he was on the run the day he died
Jones left behind three children and his wife. His children are also named in the lawsuit
Sacuto described her husband as “the most loving, kind, considerate person”
Jones was an associate professor at Boston University
Sacuto posted on Facebook after his death that he went for a run and “never returned home.”
“He accidentally entered a staircase near the JFK UMass Boston subway stop that had rusted through. He fell from a height of 6 meters and probably died instantly.
“The void he leaves behind is unspeakable,” she said.
“He was the most loving, kind, considerate person I knew. He was the best father. He loved to dance to Phish, be outside and run. He loved unconditionally and was the proudest father of his children.
“I loved him,” she wrote.