Prosecution Pins Fire On 'Money and Greed'
NY Daily News 2/9/09
A prosecutor in the Black Sunday fire trial Monday accused two Bronx tenants of causing the deaths of two firefighters by chopping up their apartments to make a few extra bucks.
Summing up the case, the prosecutor branded the tenants as greedy and negligent for turning their flats into a warren of rented rooms that trapped the doomed FDNY heroes.
"Caridad Coste and Rafael Castillo were motivated by money and greed," Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Glucksman said. "The firefighters were motivated by devotion to duty."
Defense lawyers hit back that the tenants cannot be blamed for deaths of the rescuers, especially when the response to the Jan. 23, 2005, fire was chaotic at best.
"What in the world are we doing here?" asked Francisco Knipping, Coste's lawyer. "Let them go home. They don't belong here."
The closing statements served as an emotional punctuation to a riveting trial over the deaths of Lt. Curtis Meyran, 46, and Firefighter John Bellew, 37.
Coste, 58, and Castillo, 57, face up to 15 years in prison on manslaughter charges, along with a manager and owner of the building on E. 178th St.
Holding up a jagged and burnt piece of flooring studded with melted wires, Glucksman told the jury that Castillo cannot dodge responsibility for the firefighters' deaths.
Glucksman said Coste should have known how dangerous it was to build a partition wall that blocked access to a fire escape that could have saved them.
"Her $500 wall proved to be a deadly obstacle," he said.
A lawyer for Castillo, a livery cab driver, said he is no criminal and never meant to hurt anyone.
"This is not a situation where someone put gasoline on a rag," lawyer Lisa Pelosi said.
Coste's lawyer said the firefighters should have left when they started running out of air and would never have been in danger if broken fire hydrants had been working.
"The City of New York and the Fire Department should be sitting here," Knipping said, "not these poor defendants who have nothing to do with the fire."
related...
In Closing, Prosecutors Focus On Wiring In Bronx Fire Newsday 2/9/09
Deliberations, Summations In 'Black Sunday' Trial NY1 News 2/10/09
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