A grand jury has indicted contractor Griffin T. Campbell on
six counts of third degree murder and related offenses in connection with
June’s building collapse at 22nd and Market streets, Philadelphia District
Attorney Seth Williams said Monday. The building collapsed on to a Salvation
Army thrift store and killed six people and injured another 13.
The presentment claims the contractor put his own greed
above safety by choosing to removing support beams and leaving a freestanding
wall towering above the adjacent Salvation Army building and not demolishing
from the top down as had been planned.
Campbell, 49, was also charged with six counts of
involuntary manslaughter and 13 counts of recklessly endangering another person
as well as causing catastrophe, risking catastrophe and criminal conspiracy.
Excavator operator Sean Benschop, who the district attorney
calls Kary R. Roberts, also had a criminal conspiracy charge added to the list
of offenses against him. Benschop has been in prison since days after the
incident. He's charged with six counts of involuntary manslaughter, 13 counts
of recklessly endangering another person and risking catastrophe.
Campbell turned himself in to Philadelphia Police Monday
afternoon. His lawyer, William Hobson, said his client will vigorously defend
himself against all charges. Hobson said he was not surprised by the timing of
the indictment. He said he expected the grand jury to produce charges against
his client before the holidays as he claims Williams has been facing a great
deal of “political pressure.” On the day of the incident when Philadelphia
Mayor Michael Nutter “declared my client criminally liable, [Campbell] has
never received his procedural due process,” he said.
Hobson said the city’s Department of Licenses and
Inspections has taken away Campbell’s license before he was even charged. With
serious charges now levied against Campbell, his legal team will be seeking
access to investigative materials from city officials and plaintiffs lawyers in
civil lawsuits filed in recent months, Hobson said.
Not charged by the grand jury were property owner Richard
Basciano and the Salvation Army, who were named as defendants in the civil
lawsuits. Williams, though, stressed that the grand jury investigation is not
over.
“This arrest is just one step along the road to justice,”
Williams said in a statement. “There is more work to be done, and I would like
to thank the grand jury as it continues the difficult investigation into this
tragic collapse.”
The grand jury presentment describes evidence that places
Campbell at the center of culpability for the collapse, which killed six people
and seriously injured several others. It says it was Campbell who decided not
to demolish the four-story building from the top down by hand, but rather from
the inside out. It said numerous witnesses with knowledge of demolition
procedure testified that the former method was the only acceptable way to take
down that building.
But the grand jury said it heard testimony that Campbell was
focused on maximizing salvage value, which led him to delay demolition to try
and remove as many salvageable items as possible and sell them for profit. And
that altered the way the demolition was conducted.
For example, Campbell removed the wood floors throughout the
structure and the hundreds of internal joists (horizontal supporting beams that
run from wall to wall) in the front half before lowering the external walls for
the purpose of selling them. The joists were reportedly sold for $8 a piece.
One employee testified that when instructed to remove the joists,
he told Campbell, “I wanted to know what did he plan on doing to take the wall
down safely. And he said, Well, he’s going to take care of that. So I started
taking out the joists. And when I went down to the next floor and seen how tall
the freestanding wall was going to be, I let him know that I wasn’t taking out
any more joists because I need to know how he’s going to take down a
freestanding wall because the building wasn’t coming down right.” The worker
told the grand jury that Campbell told him to just take them out.
There was also a disagreement between Basciano’s company,
STB Investments and the Salvation Army about the demolition in terms of access,
protections or repairs, despite the fact that there were numerous adjoining
parts of the two buildings, the grand jury said. The absence of any such
agreement required the utmost caution be taken with the demolition.
In addition, the grand jury found that Campbell’s team did
not work on the project much in April and May leading up to the June demolition.
Architect Plato Marinakos was hired to serve as a liaison between Basciano and
Campbell. The grand jury said emails show that Basciano was aggressively
pushing for demolition progress in late May.
So on June 2, the presentment said Campbell conducted
“significant demolition work" on the front and east-facing walls.
Marinakos stopped by to take pictures and saw the Benschop operating the
excavator pushing portions of the wall into the interior of the building.
Griffin’s team returned two days later and removed the
remaining front wall and all of the eastern wall. The presentment said the back
half was still three stories high and the western wall facing the Salvation
Army building was two stories high and was freestanding above the roof of the
adjacent thrift store.
Marinakos testified that when he arrived that day, he said
he knew that the western wall should have been lowered to near the Salvation
Army building’s roof line and capped with aluminum and flashed with roofing
material.
“I was upset because, you know, I was like, Griffin, you
can’t leave this wall here. This is just crazy. I mean, you can’t do that. So
he said, 'Don’t worry about it. Juan and the guys are coming and they going to
get... Once we clear this thing out the scaffolding can go back up and we can
take that wall down to a safe height.”
Marinakos said he told Campbell this was an immediate
concern and told Campbell to call him the next morning to let him know the wall
was down to a safe height. But the presentment said Campbell did not have
enough workers on the site to perform the task.
The grand jury said when that call came shortly after 9 a.m.
on June 5, Campbell told Marinakos that the freestanding portion of the western
wall had been reduced to near the Salvation Army building’s roofline but
photos, video and eyewitness accounts say that was not true. At around the same
time, the grand jury said Campbell directed Benschop to operate the excavator
close to the freestanding western wall in an attempt to extract joists and
clear rubble.
At 10:41 a.m., the grand jury said the western wall
collapsed onto the Salvation Army building and Griffin called Marinakos minutes
later to tell him. Marinakos testified that when he got there and asked how
this happened, Campbell admitted he didn’t take the western wall down and
apologized. He added that the excavator was yanking on something when the
collapse occurred.
Williams said he cannot say whether the grand jury will find
evidence of wrongdoing by other persons that would establish proof of criminal
offenses. He noted that the civil cases filed in this matter have lower
standards of proof. But he said the grand jury could choose to issue a report
in the future detailing its findings and may address policy implications.
On Nov. 14, The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Campbell and Benschop for
egregious safety violations and fined them nearly $400,000.
In the wake of the collapse, the city’s Department of
Licenses & Inspections (L&I) issued new demolition guidelines while a
special City Council investigative committee issued numerous reform
recommendations.
Source: Philadelphia
Business Journal
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