Elevators in Georgia are required to be inspected by the Georgia Insurance and Fire Safety Commissioner’s Office, but Georgia’s Insurance Commissioner John King says that his department doesn’t have the funds allocated to fulfill the inspections.

A state representative is sounding the alarm on Georgia’s elevator inspection process. It comes after a student-athlete was crushed and killed in an elevator that allegedly had not been inspected since August of 2019.

JauMarcus McFarland died when that elevator inside 444 Highland crushed him; a certificate inside the elevator shows it was last inspected in August 2019.

“That set off alarm bells for me,” said Rep. Matthew Wilson, (D) Brookhaven, Sandy Springs. “And it raises a lot of questions that I think a lot of people are going to want answers to, and Georgians deserve answers to.” Wilson voted “no” last year when elevator inspections changed from every six months to every 12 months.

The Office of the Insurance Commissioner said they simply didn’t have the budget – estimating only 35% of elevators in Georgia could be inspected every six months.

Many inspections were not made in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.