Nauman Hussain convicted of manslaughter in Schoharie limo case - Albany Times Union

Limo company operator faces maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of top charge


SCHOHARIE — Sam Bursese heard the click of handcuffs as sheriff’s deputies took Nauman Hussain into custody, and realized that the only person to face criminal charges in the disaster that took his daughter’s life would not be leaving the courtroom a free man.

“That was quite an impact, when I heard that,” Bursese said in an interview outside the Schoharie County courthouse. “You’re not going to walk out of here. So yeah ... it gave me some kind of justice.”

Hussain, 33, was convicted Wednesday afternoon on 20 counts of second-degree manslaughter — one for Savannah Bursese, her boyfriend Matthew Coons and the 18 other people who died in a Oct. 6, 2018, limousine crash off a country road in Schoharie County that stands as the nation’s most deadly transportation incident in a decade.

Hussain, the operator of the limousine company that rented out the decrepit stretch limousine, faces five to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced on May 31. The jury deliberated for less than six hours before agreeing with prosecutors that he had been reckless in allowing the vehicle to be on the road that day.

Families of the victims reacted audibly and burst into tears as the first of 20 guilty verdicts was read aloud. Hussain’s fiancée, Melissa Bell, ran crying out of the courtroom, while his older brother Haris held his head in his hands.

State Supreme Court Justice Peter Lynch, who presided over the trial, revoked Hussain’s bail and ordered him to the county jail.

“He’s going now! He’s going now!” someone exclaimed.

Schoharie County District Attorney Susan Mallery declined to answer questions as she and special prosecutor Frederick Rench left the courthouse.

“I want to thank the jury for doing an amazing job and listening to the evidence,” Mallery said. “Today is really about the families.”

Lee Kindlon, Hussain’s attorney, said he would seek to have his client released from custody pending his appeal of the verdict.

Kindlon said he sympathized with the families of the dead, as well as with his client. He said that after Hussain was taken away, he called Nauman’s father, Shahed Hussain, who sobbed on the other line from Pakistan. Hussain’s father, a former FBI undercover operative who worked on several post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions, appears to have remained in Pakistan throughout the years since the crash despite his son’s legal travails.

“I’m just heartbroken for everyone involved,” Kindlon said.

The verdict comes more than four and a half years after the crash outside the Apple Barrel Cafe left dozens of families bereft, and eight months after a sudden judicial reversal in the case brought Hussain to trial following a scuttled no-jail plea deal that had been approved by Mallery.

Wednesday’s verdict arrived not long after the jury asked the judge to explain the difference between the two charges Hussain faced: second-degree manslaughter and the lesser offense of criminally negligent homicide.

The jury had the option to find Hussain guilty of criminally negligent homicide if they determined that the recklessness required to convict on the manslaughter charge was not supported by evidence.

Juror Andrea Austin, a Sharon Springs resident who had lived in California at the time of the crash, said she and her fellow jurors took their role seriously. Austin would not discuss the deliberations in detail, or say if there had been any initial holdouts.

“It was a very difficult — a very heavy trial,” she said. “We all felt the weight of it on our shoulders, and as we were doing our deliberations, we all knew the gravity of the case and what we were facing.”

It was the second time Hussain had been found guilty in the case.

In 2021, he pleaded guilty to 20 counts of criminally negligent homicide in a deal with Mallery in exchange for avoiding any jail or prison time. But Lynch, who took over the case last summer after the retirement of the previous judge, tossed the plea agreement after concluding it was illegal.

The jury was never told about that plea deal or that Hussain’s defense attorney, Lee Kindlon, had sued Lynch in an attempt to claw back the terms of the plea deal. That effort was rebuffed just a few weeks ago by a state appellate court.

Seventeen passengers, Hussain’s driver and two bystanders were killed just outside the village when the Prestige Limousine stretch party limo, rented out that day by a group of friends headed to a birthday party, slammed through the parking lot of the Apple Barrel Cafe before crashing into a ditch.

While descending a steep section of Route 30, the brakes on the 31-foot stretch Ford Excursion failed. By the time the 5-ton vehicle reached the bottom of the hill, it was going more than 100 mph.

The driver, Scott Lisinicchia, swerved around a car stopped at the intersection, crossed the highway and collided head-on with a Toyota Highlander in the Apple Barrel’s parking lot, killing two men standing alongside.

When the Excursion crashed into the ditch on the far side of the parking lot, all 18 people aboard died of blunt force trauma. It was the worst highway transportation disaster in the country in more than a decade.

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