Davenport building collapse investigation reveals years of ignored warnings and regulatory breakdown

After the Scott County Attorney stonewalled its release, the public can finally read the state’s investigation into the deadly collapse of the Davenport Hotel. Inside: cash workers, altered reports, and a runaway landlord.

Andrew Wold stood in a metal fabrication shop off State Street in Bettendorf, Iowa. It was the last Sunday of a hot May in 2023. And he was showing pictures of a problem he was having at a six-story brick building he owned in Davenport. The problem: along the western wall, bricks were visibly cracked and crumbling. Wold had people working on it at the time and he needed to secure some steel beams—and fast.

He was in the shop when his phone buzzed. Wold looked at the screen and covered his mouth.

In nearby Davenport, an 80-unit apartment building—his building—had partially collapsed. After the smoke cleared, three people—Branden Colvin, Sr., Ryan Hitchcock, and Daniel Prien—were killed in the collapse. In another part of the building, Quanishia “Peach” White Berry was scrolling TikTok videos waiting for groceries when the building came down on top of her and her wife Lexus. In order to rescue her from the wreckage, rescue crews had to amputate White Berry’s left leg.

Wold didn’t know any of that yet. He thanked the steel shop worker, saying, “I’m not going to need ’em…thanks guys…it just went down.”

That’s according to the long awaited release of the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation’s report on the collapse. It sheds some crucial light on what happened at 324 Main Street, what led to it, and what happened after.

A paper trail of neglect

The regulatory environment and the physical reality of a building of this size are such that they rarely fall. One of the few comparable examples of such a thing happening was the 2021 collapse of a Florida condominium building. And these conditions do not occur overnight. They’re the product of a long road of decisions—or indecisions.

Years before the collapse, the City of Davenport played a bureaucratic game of tag with Wold. The report, coupled with previous releases, shows a steady drumbeat of violations, inspection orders, and warnings stretching back to 2016. There were several letters marked “Official Notice to Vacate.” There were photographs of crumbling brick and failing mortar. There were spreadsheets tracking dozens of code violations.

When a resident complained to the city about lack of heat, building manager Sarah Tyler responded to the city: “Lol! He has mental health issues. He moved out months ago.” When the city wanted to inspect the heating system, Tyler said they’d switched off the heat so inspection wouldn’t be possible.

In early 2020, a city inspector found violations so severe that the city’s former director of the department that manages building inspections, Rich Oswald, said, “I’M NOT AFRAID OF CLOSING THE BUILDING DOWN.” But city inspectors never closed it. Instead, they kept watching as things got worse. Eighteen residents complained their heat didn’t work in the winter of 2020. Trash piled up in stairwells. Water leaked through ceilings and down walls. The building would be cited 19 times, wracking up $4,500 in fines. Oswald has since resigned.

Back in 2023, documents showed how months prior, Mid-American Energy warned that the condition of the southwest exterior brick wall had reached a dangerous point. So dangerous that Mid-American would no longer send crews to the area until the western wall had been secured.

When contractors started repairs, they discovered the job was much bigger than anyone thought. “APPEARS THE WEST WALL HAS COLLAPSED INTO THE SCAFFOLDING,” a city code enforcer wrote. The contractors warned that a dangerous void had formed and that the repair cost would jump from $40,000 to $50,000.

‘Inadequate repairs’ for cash

Wold had been instructed by the city to use licensed masons on the site to avoid further issues. He claimed that the work done on the site was being performed by licensed masons working for an established company called Fuessel Masonry.

But DCI eventually tracked down people who had worked on the apartment. In Moline, Illinois, they interviewed a Spanish-speaking man through a 14-year-old translator who said Wold’s company, Alliance Contracting, paid them in cash. The investigators found no evidence that the workers were licensed.

That detail is important in light of another interview by investigators. Oswald said his office was suspicious about whether Wold—who had developed a “bad reputation”—was using unlicensed masonry workers to save costs.

Oswald told investigators that he wasn’t able to confirm whether the masonry work that led to the collapse was done by a licensed mason. Oswald said his inspector on the case, Trishna Pradhan, who he said was in charge, didn’t inquire more deeply.

According to an engineering report by White Birch Group, LLC and SOCOTEC Engineering, Inc., the root causes of the collapse were inadequate capacity of the wall and inadequate shoring. Among the proximate causes—the secondary causes that contributed to the collapse—were neglect and “inadequate repair techniques.”

City inspector looks “guilty as shit”

The day the Davenport Hotel partially collapsed, the city’s website registered that an inspection for “framing before cover” had been approved. But in the ensuing days, it had been changed to “failed.” The city called this a “computer glitch.” But the investigation firmly places the change at the feet of Trishna Pradhan.

Pradhan was scheduled to go on vacation three days before the collapse. She met with Wold before the collapse and according to the city, failed to document the inspection correctly. Returning from vacation after the collapse, she changed the inspection report from “passed” to “incomplete.”

Her supervisor, Oswald, said while he did not believe there was malicious intent, altering the report made Pradhan look “guilty as shit” and that he would have fired her.

Wold ran from police

After the collapse, Andrew Wold went into hiding following a public outcry over the deadly collapse. In early June, investigators got a warrant for his phone. The search led them to Le Mars, Iowa where a pickup truck with Scott County plates had been observed at a redacted location.

On June 8, DCI Special Agent Matt Burns drove to the house of Wold’s mother-in-law in La Mars. Burns found her mowing the lawn. He asked if Wold was home, and she claimed he was at the Y playing basketball with his son. She offered to call him and went inside. While she was inside, Burns sent a Le Mars officer to the Y to make contact with him.

But when she returned, she said that Wold, who was home, would come outside. As he came down the driveway, Burns displayed his badge, introduced himself, and said he had a warrant for Wold’s phone. Wold ran.

“I followed Wold through the garage, but he entered the house and locked the door behind him,” Burns wrote.

The mother-in-law let Burns in, where they stood in the entryway. Wold was on the phone with his lawyer. According to Burns, Wold was accusing the police of trying to steal his phone. The lawyer told him to turn over the phone.

Burns offered to take the conversation into the garage, away from Wold’s kids who were in the house. There he read the warrant, and Wold handed over the phone.

The upshot

Scott County Attorney Kelly Cunningham, a Republican, has said she will not bring charges against Wold. She originally reached out to DCI for “second opinion,” but the evidence they documented of the lead up to the western wall’s deadly final failure didn’t sway her, she said.

“And you could actively see through the course of communications that he [Wold] was engaging in all of the steps that he was taking to address the issue with that wall, and we can see where he’s going to businesses and he’s acquiring supplies,” she told KWQC. “And he’s looking for products to brace the wall. So nothing within the context of that would give rise to the filing of a criminal charge.”

Cunningham said there wasn’t a criminal case to be made; that there was nothing that could be used to hold Wold criminally liable for the 324 Main St. collapse. But since the DCI delivered the report to her office, Cunningham has fought to prevent its release to the public. She went as far as to ask the Iowa Public Information Board last month to back her belief that the report was a secret. She lost that bid, and DCI made it available.

Since running from police, Wold has fled to Florida and changed his name to Andrew Lange. He reportedly now works in real estate. At this point, he’s been selling off millions in property in the Quad-Cities area. He’s still tied to a civil lawsuit asking for tens of millions in damages.

The report reveals a chain of pointing fingers, each leading to the next. Wold hired contractors; the city issued permits. The city gave orders; Wold said he followed them. Everyone said they did their job, and somehow three people died anyway.

Zachary Oren Smith writes about politics for Iowa Starting Line. He’s the host of weekly Iowa podcast Cornhole Champions. Subscribe to get the show and newsletter right when it drops Wednesday mornings. 

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