NEW YORK CITY — The construction worker who died Friday after falling 70 feet while working on an NYU building was an avid musician and loving family man, according to his family and posts on his social media accounts.
Jaime Sillart, 56, of Bergenfield, N.J., fell from scaffolding at 19 University Place on Friday, a construction site where he had been working for a few weeks, officials said. He was taken to Belleveue Hospital where he was declared dead.
"He was the best brother, friend and father that anyone could have," his younger sister Edna Maldona Sillart said.
Sillart, who lived with and cared for his aging mother, played the drums once a week at the Harvest Bistro and Bar in Closter, N.J.
"RIP buddy, you will be missed," Juan Luna, who played alongside Sillart, wrote on Sillart's Facebook page.
Sillart, who delivered brick and concrete to masons at the NYU jobsite, had only been with D.P. Consulting and Construction Corporation for three weeks, a colleague said.
Although Sillart did not have the proper training certification to work on a support scaffold, according to the Department of Buildings, he posted several photos of the work site on Facebook.
"This hideous grid of rebar and wire will soon be one slab of equally not as hideous concrete. The wheelbarrels in the foreground are how we will bring in the tons of the gray slurpy. Bring it on," he wrote in one post with a photo of an interior work space.
In other photos, from Oct. 23 and 24, he touted, "I moved some 700 bricks this morning. I felt so strong that I ate one for lunch, LOL."
In other photos he posted, he was with his daughter, his "princess," walking through Harriman State Park late in October.
His family said they have not set a date for Sillart's services.
With additional reporting by Jess Wisloski.
