NEW YORK (AP) – Former New York state Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who resigned over sexual harassment allegations after a 30-year career in the Assembly, has died. He was 74.
Lopez died Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, where he had been treated for cancer for several years, his lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, said.
Lopez resigned from the Assembly in 2013 over allegations of sexually harassing young women on his staff.
The allegations detailed in reports from a special prosecutor and the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics included Lopez forcing his hand up a woman’s leg, trying to coerce women to share hotel rooms with him and asking them to touch the tumors on his neck.
Lopez denied the accusations, but resigned rather than face an expulsion proceeding.