NY Daily News – February 12, 2016
by Shayna Jacobs, Stephen Rex Brown
They wanted to save money on gas — and it wound up costing two lives.
Five people were charged Thursday with rigging an elaborate gas delivery system in an East Village building, causing a massive explosion last March that killed two people and leveled three buildings.
The owners of the destroyed five-story building at the center of the blast, Maria Hrynenko, 56, and her 30-year-old son, Michael, as well as plumber Athanasios (Jerry) Ioannidis, 59, and general contractor Dilber Kukic, 40, face charges of manslaughter in the second degree and criminally negligent homicide, among other counts.
Andrew Trombettas is charged with “renting” his master plumber license to Ioannidis so he could get work on the property approved.
“The seven-alarm fire that killed two people and engulfed three buildings in March 2015 was caused by a foreseeable, preventable, and completely avoidable gas explosion,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.
“As alleged in the indictment, the defendants created a deadly inferno fueled by an illegal gas delivery system.”
There are a total of 22 counts in the indictment against the five defendants expected to be arraigned this afternoon in Manhattan.
“These defendants were driven by greed in this case,” said Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Deborah Hickey.
“They all let loose a hellfire storm of awful proportions.”
Court papers alleged that when Michael Hrynenko and Kukic realized the building was about to blow, they ran out of the doomed Sushi Park restaurant without warning anyone inside. As they tried to fix the secret and elaborate gas siphoning system they’d set up in a neighboring basement, the explosion occurred, documents charge.
Nicholas Figueroa, 23, was killed while on a lunch date at the restaurant.
“We’re just hoping they don’t get slapped on the wrists,” said Tyler Figueroa, 20, Nicholas’s brother.
“We don’t want these people to just get away with it.”
Restaurant worker Moises Locon, 26, was also killed.
Locon worked as a busboy but “aspired to save enough money to go back to his native Guatemala and to become a school teacher,” Vance said. His body was so badly burned it could only be identified through DNA testing.
Mayor de Blasio said he hoped the indictments would bring some closure to the victims’ families.
“The individuals involved in the East Village gas explosion showed a blatant and callous disregard for human life,” he said.
The tragic chain of events began in 2013 when Maria Hrynenko hired Kukic as a general contractor to renovate several properties she owned in the city, documents charge.
Kukic then hired Ioannidis — who did not have a plumbing license — to do work on the doomed property on 2nd Ave., which was managed by Michael Hrynenko, according to papers.
Trombettas “rented” his plumbing license to Ioannidis to get the work approved by the Department of Buildings, according to documents.
By early 2014 Hrynenko had signed lease agreements for the four newly renovated apartments in the building for an average of a $6,000 a month each, papers show —though Con Ed had yet to approve the installation of gas meters for the residences.
In July 2014 Maria Hrynenko told Kukic to siphon gas bound for apartments in the five-story building from Sushi Park’s gas meter, papers charge. Residents were kept in the dark about the illegal operation, which involved attaching “flexible hosing” to the restaurant’s gas meter, according to papers.
“Flex hosing used in this way is illegal and extremely unsafe because of its potential to disconnect, break, or leak,” Assistant District Attorney Rachana Pathak wrote in court documents.
A building inspector discovered the scheme, disabled the gas and ordered the dangerous setup be fixed.
But instead, the defendants installed “a series of pipes and valves” connecting the apartment units to a gas meter in the adjacent vacant property at 119 2nd Ave., which was also owned by Hrynenko, prosecutors allege. The job, completed around August 2014, cost $5,000.
“The system was set up in the back of the building basement, behind locked doors, hidden from Con Ed, and obscured from view by tenants, workers and potential inspectors,” according to a release.
Con Ed restored gas to the site, but a subsequent inspection the day of the blast spotted unapproved work — though the “full extent of the unauthorized gas delivery system remained hidden from inspectors’ view,” according to papers.
After failing the inspection, Kukic and Michael Hrynenko reopened the gas supply from the neighboring property and also mistakenly left the shut-off valves open, allowing gas to flow into Sushi Park, prosecutors say.
About 3 p.m. a Sushi Park employee smelled a gas odor and notified Hrynenko, who ordered her son and Kukic to inspect the smell, according to documents. They realized the danger and were caught on surveillance video sprinting through the restaurant without speaking to any patrons, papers show.
They ran to a separate basement entrance to access their illegal setup, prosecutors say.
Then the whole place blew up.
“Restaurant employees described the walls suddenly crumbling, the ceiling caving in and heavy smoke,” prosecutors wrote.
At least 13 people suffered serious injuries.
A University of California-Berkeley student visiting New York for the first time on spring break was near the blast and lost an eye and fractured his larynx.
It took days to extinguish the fire. Two firefighters who helped in the effort required a hip replacement and knee
“Not withstanding 9/11, this was the worst fire I have had in my 38-year career,” an FDNY battalion chief said, according to documents. Three properties, 119, 121 and 123 2nd Ave., all collapsed.
“Their greed motivated them to deviate grossly from the standard of care established by numerous safety regulations, codes and industry standards,” prosecutors wrote.
Tyler Figueroa said the family might light a candle this evening next to his brother’s ashes in their home in Spanish Harlem.
A vigil at the site of the blast is planned for March 26, the one-year anniversary of the disaster, Figueroa said.
“We’re finally getting justice for my brother,” he said.
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