A 61-year-old Westchester County man was pronounced dead after a freak fall at Madison Square Garden following a New York Rangers game Saturday night, officials said.
Ernest Vogliano, the scion of a once prominent Big Apple restauranteur, died after falling more than two stories inside the World’s Most Famous Arena, with his death later ruled accidental by the city coroner, his family and officials said.
Vogliano’s family has now hired an attorney to get to the bottom of the incident, claiming they were kept in the dark about how it happened.
“We have no idea what happened, but they do,” family attorney Fred Eisenberg told The Post. “We have to review the evidence.
“He was there and we know that he died,” Eisenberg said. “We’d like to find out how.”
The NYPD reported a 911 call of an injured person at the arena around 10:40 p.m. on Saturday and found an unresponsive man suffering from head trauma.
Vogliano was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, cops said.
A rep for the FDNY said Wednesday that it had no record of a call to the Garden, so it’s not immediately clear how Vogliano was transported to the hospital.
An autopsy by the city medical examiner determined that Vogliano died as a result of blunt force trauma and ruled his death at the Garden an accident.
But Eisenberg said the family was never given the details, prompting him on Wednesday to send MSG officials a demand that all evidence relevant to Vogliano’s death, including surveillance video footage, be preserved until it can be reviewed.
The incident comes as MSG owner James Dolan’s company is under investigation by the New York State Liquor Authority, which could potentially see the agency pull the liquor licenses of not just the Garden, but Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theater.
Dolan has also taken heat for using facial-recognition technology to bar fans he considered undesirable from his venues — including lawyers he has a legal beef with.
In an email Wednesday, a rep for MSG called Vogliano’s death “a tragic accident” that has nothing to do with the state liquor investigation.
“A fan at this past Saturday’s Rangers game was injured in a tragic accident while he was exiting the venue and was immediately transported to a local hospital where he passed away,” the email said. “Our deepest and heartfelt condolences go out to his loved ones.”
Vogliano’s father, the late Ernest Sr., was the longtime owner of Ill Vagabondo restaurant on East 62nd Street, a one-time Italian social court that evolved into a popular eatery whose patrons included the likes of Cindy Crawford and Tom Hanks in its heyday.
The younger Vogliano was the founder of Monster Productions, a New York City web design firm, and published Aspen Aces & Eights magazine.
