To Hell with Heroes: Judge Rules No One Pays for Black Sunday Firefighter Deaths

NY Daily News 2/24/10

Justice took a brutal beating in the Bronx yesterday with the dismissal of the sole conviction in the Black Sunday deaths of two courageous members of the FDNY.

Lt. Curtis Meyran and Firefighter John Bellew lost their lives under horrifying circumstances in 2005 - chief among them, criminal irresponsibility that converted a fourth-floor apartment into a hellish firetrap.

Yet Bronx Supreme Court Justice Margaret Clancy, aided and abetted by District Attorney Robert Johnson, has ruled that no one will be held accountable in the deaths.

Chased by exploding flames, Meyran, Bellew and four comrades chose the only way out. That was to jump. The others suffered grievous injuries in the desperate gamble. Meyran and Bellew perished as they crashed into the concrete below.

Johnson promised to bring the full weight of the law to bear in fit retribution. There were full and infuriating grounds.

A tenant on the third floor, Rafael Castillo, had put up illegal partitions that blocked a fire escape to create cubicles he could sublet. He also illegally used extension cords and overloaded fuse boxes to provide electricity to the illegal occupants.

A tenant on the fourth floor, Caridad Coste, also had blocked the fire escape with an illegal partition to create more sublet space.

The building's manager, Cesar Rios, who had owned the property for 20 years, still collected the rents and directed the superintendent. He was aware that Coste had put up the illegal wall, and his super had seen plywood and plasterboard for similar construction in Castillo's apartment.

When the fire was sparked in the overloaded circuits on the third floor, it spread to the fourth, funneled by the partitions, which also blocked the firefighters from the fire escape.

Johnson indicted Coste, Castillo and Rios for criminally negligent homicide. Astonishingly, he couldn't make the case against Coste and Castillo after their lawyers peddled a story that the firefighters would have survived except for difficulty the FDNY had in getting water on the blaze. Hydrants near the building were frozen that night.

And now, Clancy, after waiting a full year, has thrown out the case against Rios, who was convicted by a separate jury.

She took this extraordinary step based on a finding that Johnson had not given the panel sufficient grounds to believe that Rios knew of the illegal partitions.

Really? Rios had a complete understanding of the economics of Bronx apartment buildings and the value of even small illegal cubicles. The jurors had no doubt that Rios knew what was going on inside the apartments, but Clancy knew better.

From the bench yesterday, she told how firefighters race to confront dangers that everyone else flees. And then she deemed that no one would pay for the lives of two firefighters who died doing exactly that.