The Manhattan mom who was injured by a falling Central Park tree in August has spoken out about the incident on Monday as her and her lawyers plan to file a $200 million lawsuit against the city.
“Our lives are forever altered by what happened,” Anne Monoky Goldman told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” on Monday.
Goldman spoke with the show for the first time since the Aug. 15, 2017 incident in which a 3,000-pound elm tree crashed down on her and her three children, including the baby strapped to her chest.
Her 2-year-old son’s skull was fractured by the tree and Goldman herself suffered four fractures to her neck. Two of those will never heal, she said her doctors told her, which puts her at constant risk of becoming a quadriplegic.
“You know, to be told by a doctor… ‘You will stop breathing if something jarring happens to you, you have to be really careful,’” she told GMA. “I mean, for my kids I just have to move forward and keep going.”
Goldman previously ran marathons, she said in the interview, but after the incident she couldn’t even lift up her baby for months.
Her lawyers are alleging negligence by the city, saying that the trees were not properly maintained.
“This wasn’t a freak accident, this was a preventable accident,” Goldman’s lawyers told ABC GMA on Monday.
The lawyers previously announced the lawsuit in September but plan to now officially file the suit against New York City, the Central Park Conservancy and other companies who maintain the park’s trees, they told GMA.
The Central Park Conservancy, a private nonprofit that manages the park under contract with the city, told ABC back in August that the tree fell “as a result of decay in the root system beneath the surrounding pavement.”
