NY Times – February 12, 2016
by MARC SANTORA and JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
The police arrested five people and charged four of them with involuntary manslaughter on Thursday in connection with a deadly gas explosion that rocked the East Village in Manhattan last spring, with prosecutors saying that the loss of life was the direct result of the greed of the building’s owner.
The powerful blast at 121 Second Avenue in March left two people dead, scores injured and reduced three buildings to rubble. It also raised concerns about the state of New York City’s aging infrastructure and highlighted the danger in people illegally tapping into gas lines as developers and landlords rush to get a piece of the ever-more expensive real estate market.
Speaking at a news conference Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., said that with construction taking place across the city at a “breakneck speed” the “financial incentives to take shortcuts has never been stronger.”
The deadly East Village explosion, he said, was the direct result of a landlord hungry to cash in on soaring rents at the expense of doing the work properly to ensure the safety of both the residents in the building and the surrounding neighborhood.
Mr. Vance outlined a scheme as contemptible as it was craven, involving a crooked contractor, an unscrupulous plumber, a greedy landlord and her son — all so eager to get tenants into newly renovated apartments with the average rent running $6,000 per month that they were willing to cast aside any concern for safety.
Even in the last moments before the explosion, two of the defendants are accused of running out of the building without warning any of the residents or patrons inside a ground-floor restaurant or even calling 911.
“The individuals involved in the East Village gas explosion showed a blatant and callous disregard for human life,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in an unusually blunt statement.
“We are heartened that today these defendants will be brought to justice and forced to answer for their criminal actions,” he said.
The four people charged with involuntary manslaughter are Dilber Kukic, a contractor; Athanasios Ioannidis, an unlicensed plumber; Maria Hrynenko, the owner of the building; and her son, Michael Hrynenko Jr.
The fifth person taken into custody, Andrew Trombettas, faced lesser charges for supplying his master license to Mr. Ioannidis.
Mr. Vance said that Mr. Kukic was hired by the building’s owner to renovate the apartments in the six-story building in 2013. The work was completed in 2014 but the utility company Consolidated Edison did not approve the gas lines for the apartments.
The defendants, according to prosecutors, decided to create their own illegal gas link.
In August 2014, Con Edison workers, responding to calls from people smelling gas, visited the property and discovered that a utility line intended only for the ground-floor restaurant, Sushi Park, had been tapped to provide gas to the residential apartments.
Con Edison shut off all gas to that building on Aug. 6 and restored the service on Aug. 15, after the landlord had taken away the tapping apparatus.
However, according to prosecutors, the defendants devised a way to continue to illegally tap into the gas line of the neighboring building, 119 Second Avenue, which was also owned by Ms. Hrynenko, to feed the apartments. “The defendants constructed another illegal unsafe gas delivery system by installing a series of pipes and valves connecting the apartments in 121 Second Avenue to an uncapped, commercial-grade gas meter in the adjacent, vacant property,” Mr. Vance said.
The system was set up in the back of the building’s basement — behind locked doors, hidden from Con Edison, tenants and other workers.
On the day of the explosion, Con Edison inspectors had returned to the building for an inspection and found fault with plumbing work in the basement but no signs of leaking gas.
After the inspectors left, according to law enforcement officials, Mr. Kukic and Mr. Hrynenko turned the gas back on. However, they did not know that valves opened during a pressure test by Con Edison were never closed.
About a half-hour after the Con Ed workers left, the manager of the restaurant called Ms. Hrynenko, saying he smelled gas.
Soon after he made that call, the explosion rocked the neighborhood and fire raged through the East Village neighborhood. Residents jumped from fire escapes and made desperate attempts to help one another get to safety. Two people inside the sushi restaurant were killed: Moises Ismael Locon Yac, 27, a busboy, and Nicholas Figueroa, 23, who had been on a lunch date.
The fire commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, said that the tragedy was nearly even worse and that scores of firefighters narrowly avoided losing their lives as the fire raged and the structure collapsed.
“When greed guides the decisions and respect for human life doesn’t, this is the result,” he said.
Lawyers for the defendants, who were arraigned on Thursday, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Ms. Hrynenko inherited the building from her husband, Michael, who had been the owner of the well-known Kiev diner before his death in 2004.
After the explosion, as investigators focused on the actions of the landlord, a lawyer for Ms. Hrynenko said that Con Edison bore responsibility for not shutting off the gas during the visit to the property earlier that day.
“Maria would not have sent her son in there if she knew the building was going to explode,” the lawyer, Thomas M. Curtis, said last spring.
“I think Con Ed is really culpable here for not shutting off the gas,” the lawyer said. “They could have shut off the main valve.”
The chief of detectives, Robert Boyce, however, said the explosion had sent a chill through the city, with residents wondering if they were safe in their homes. “This is a monumental case,” he said. “I think it sends a message we’re not going to tolerate this garbage, these shortcuts.”
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