SCHOHARIE — State Supreme Court Justice Peter Lynch denied a motion Monday by Nauman Hussain’s legal team to delay the Schoharie limousine crash trial so that prosecutors could subpoena FBI Director Christopher Wray for details on an investigation into Hussain’s father, a longtime FBI informant with a checkered past.
Lee Kindlon, Hussain’s Albany attorney, told Lynch during a hearing Monday in Schoharie County Court that Shahed Hussain, who owned the limo company involved in the crash, had been able to break state law and fool the state Department of Motor Vehicles into registering the 31-foot stretch Ford Excursion as a regular SUV with less than 11 passengers.
Judge ruled Mavis committed fraud related to limo service
The falsified 2016 registration allowed the Excursion, which was stretched in 2001 to seat more than 18 people, to escape more stringent regulation by the state, which subjects most stretch limos to a regimen of inspections and certifications close to what school buses receive.
Twenty people died in the Oct. 6, 2018, crash — the worst highway transportation disaster in the U.S. in more than a decade.
Nauman Hussain is facing 20 counts each of criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter. The trial is scheduled to begin May 1.
Kindlon suggested that the recently completed FBI investigation of the crash and its oversight of Shahed Hussain could provide evidence that might help his son at trial — for instance, if the FBI had any role deceiving the DMV or knowledge that their erstwhile informant had been breaking the law with his limousine business.
Shahed Hussain purchased the white 2001 stretch Excursion in July 2016 from another limo company for a few thousand dollars and then registered it in his name.
“That is perhaps the original sin in this case,” Kindlon argued…
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