On a summery, 86 degree day in Davenport, Quanishia “Peach” White-Cotton Berry and her wife Lexus noticed an opening they had never seen before near one of the windows in their apartment.
Sensing danger, they began to gather their cats. But at that moment, the west side of their apartment building collapsed, bringing their unit to the ground and Peach along with it. Court documents state Lexus watched her wife fall four stories and debris land on top of her.
First responders amputated Peach’s leg in order to extricate her from the rubble. Lexus had curled into a ball on a small beam that prevented her from falling, leaving her with bruises and cuts.
The couple lived to tell their story, but three people died in the collapse: Ryan Hitchcock, Branden Colvin Sr. and Daniel Prien.
“My heart, and certainly the community’s heart, goes out to those who have been impacted by the unimaginable tragedy that we saw yesterday,” said Mayor Mike Matson at a news conference the next day.
In the days following the incident, city crews were certain that the building would be demolished due to its compromised structural integrity, leading some to question how forensic data would be collected from the site as part of local and state investigations.
Now, two years later, there is a grassy plot where 324 Main St. used to be. Although the building is gone, much still remains unclear about whether the building’s owner will face accusations about the structure's condition in court.
No criminal charges filed against the building's owner
Soon after the incident, the city of Davenport began investigating the root causes of the partial wall collapse. The city partnered with Chicago-based forensics firm White Birch Group and SOCOTEC Engineering to begin working on a report that would be released in September 2023.
The preliminary investigative report determined that “inadequate capacity of wall system” and “inadequate shoring” were the root causes of the collapse. It also detailed a series of repair campaigns in the years and months leading up to the incident, including that the city had issued a permit to shore up portions of the west wall just four days before the collapse. In fact, contractors had been working on the exterior of the building just hours before the collapse.
The disaster also prompted the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) to begin a detailed forensic investigation into the root and proximate causes. The report was delivered to Scott County Attorney Kelly Cunningham in April 2024 for her determination on whether Andrew Wold, who owned the building at the time, could be held criminally responsible.
Cunningham said in February that Wold could not be criminally charged for the collapse.
“When you look at the issue of whether or not criminal charges are to be filed, very simply, you have to have the commission of a crime,” Cunningham said. “This, very simply, was the structural failure of a building.”
Cunningham said that while involuntary manslaughter is a criminal case, negligence is a civil concept to be decided by a jury. In her investigation, Cunningham said she found nothing that could be used to hold Wold criminally liable for the 324 Main St. collapse.
But the report that she based her decision on has not been made fully public, except for a seven-page summary detailing the root and proximate causes of the collapse.
When media organizations asked Cunningham for the full DCI report, she reportedly told them she would not be releasing it due to the confidentiality of investigative reports under Iowa state code and the possibility that making the report public could bring a “clear and present danger to the safety of an individual.”
“From the time of the building collapse and moving forward, I was apprised of a number of threats that existed to the safety of the involved parties,” Cunningham said in her responses to inquirers.
In April, the Scott County Attorney’s Office filed a petition for declaratory order with the Iowa Public Information Board, asking the board to review whether the report could be made public under Cunningham’s supervision. The board ruled against the county attorney’s ownership request on May 15, instead naming the Iowa Department of Public Safety as the lawful custodian who can decide whether to make the report public.
Wold ‘liquidated assets’ and fled to Florida
Multiple lawsuits emerged in the months and years following the disaster.
Dayna Feuerbach was a resident of 324 Main St. and the first to file a petition against Wold and his companies.
“Wold ignored the warnings of danger, delayed making the necessary repairs and attempted to cut corners in an effort to save money,” Feuerbach’s petition alleges.
Several other lawsuits were filed after Feuerbach’s, making similar claims. In December 2023, they were consolidated into one lawsuit that remains active. The most recent filings were entered May 22, a series of petitions filed by residents of 324 Main St.
In a court filing from February, plaintiffs alleged that Wold sold 20 of his 22 properties since the collapse, many of them for less than market value.
“The overwhelming inference is that this is a calculated effort by Andrew Wold and AWI [Andrew Wold Investments] to liquidate their assets so that Plaintiffs cannot collect on them,” per the filing, which petitioned a judge to create a trust for Wold to hold the assets from his sales.
However, the plaintiffs withdrew the petition for a court-ordered trust on April 21 “after reviewing certain real estate transactions at issue for the petition,” according to the notice of withdrawal. It is unclear which transactions in particular the petition references.
Court records in Sarasota County, Fla., show Wold filed a petition to change his name from Andrew Robert Lee Wold to Andrew Michael Langel in December 2024. His request was granted in January.
A posting on realtor.com lists Andrew Michael Langel as a realtor in Venice, Fla.
Local citizens engaged in independent investigations
Amidst the county attorney’s decision not to press charges and Wold’s move to Florida, a group of concerned Davenport residents have been conducting investigations into the collapse of 324 Main St., independent of local news outlets.
Ezra Sidran is a retired computer science professor from the University of Iowa, where he taught for 12 years. In Davenport, where he lived for over 40 years, he and his wife were celebrating their anniversary with friends on the day of the collapse.
“I remember sitting on our porch talking to some friends, old colleagues from academia, and enjoying the day. And it was a beautiful day,” Sidran said. “And then we started hearing sirens racing downtown, and we had no idea what was going on.”
The next day, Sidran saw people protesting at the site against the city’s demolition, the timing of which was still being evaluated, according to the city of Davenport.
“They were protesting because the city of Davenport had announced they were going to tear the remaining portion of 324 Main St. down, and the people that were there knew that there were people still alive in the rubble, and there were,” Sidran said. “And that’s when I got involved.”
Now, Sidran is a regular contributor to the Facebook group Whistle Davenport, where users continually post updates with new information regarding the building's collapse. He has also posted detailed timelines and op-ed pieces in local publications, with references to documents he acquired through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
“Nobody was going forward. Nobody was uncovering this information. Nobody was standing up and saying, ‘This isn’t right,’” Sidran said. “So, I had to do it. And then, once I did it, others did it, and that’s the way democracy works.”
The Whistle Davenport Facebook group had over 30 posts in May and has over 3,200 members. The group was created just days after the collapse.
“The city is extraordinarily culpable,” Sidran said, citing multiple notices to vacate and public safety hazard notices that he claims the city had not been enforcing. “And rather [than] doing the right thing and trying to settle with the victims, they have stonewalled and stonewalled.”
The city’s investigative report noted 10 letters and code violation notices ranging from August 2020 through March 9, 2023. The city also released records of complaints from tenants, final notices for building repairs and multiple notices to vacate leading up to the collapse.
Sidran said he has become an expert on Iowa Code Chapter 22, regarding public records, amongst the legal obstacles he's faced in trying to obtain documents from the city and county attorney. He said that’s the unfortunate consequence of conducting his investigations.
Sidran said he put in a request to the Iowa Department of Public Safety for a copy of the full DCI investigation report after the Iowa Public Information Board's ruling. He said he hopes to receive the report by Friday.
But it’s uncertain whether his request will be granted — a victory that would come after hundreds of hours of writing FOIA requests and interviewing people with knowledge of the event.
“What I want out of this is to go back to sitting on the porch with my friends, where I was when this all started. That’s what I want,” Sidran said. “My wife and I would like to get our anniversary back, which we can’t, because it’s always going to be an anniversary of this death.”
