SCHOHARIE – Five jurors, including the foreman, were picked Tuesday morning at the trial of limousine company operator Nauman Hussain, who is on trial on homicide charges in the Oct. 6, 2018 crash that killed 20 people.
The foreman is a carpenter and father of two. One man and three women fill out the first group of jurors picked for the panel that will decide whether Hussain is criminally responsible for the crash outside a popular tourist destination at the intersection of routes 30 and 30A.
Jury selection will continue after Tuesday’s one-hour lunch break. The first five jurors were sent home by state Supreme Court Justice Peter Lynch until the full jury of 12 jurors and four alternates is assembled.
Hussain, 33, is charged with 20 counts each of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. The manslaughter charge carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in state prison.
The trial is getting under way months after Lynch threw out Hussain’s original plea deal, which spared him from prison time. Lynch ruled the agreement ran afoul of state law and an appeals court twice rejected Hussain’s bid to have the deal restored.
The crash in a parking lot next to the Apple Barrel Country Store came in the midst of the region’s fall tourist season. The limousine was carrying 17 passengers – many from Amsterdam – to a party at Brewery Ommegang outside Cooperstown when the brakes failed on a steep section of Route 30.
The super-stretch Ford Excursion SUV-style limousine descended the hill and sped into the parking lot. Two bystanders were killed and all of the passengers and the driver died when the limousine slammed into a ditch.
It remains the country’s deadliest highway crash in more than a decade.
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