The contractor/ family friend/ boyfriend is going to jail for a long time. He will not be “getting through this”.
Gross negligence with the ashes, no CO, no fire detectors, knowledge of the home’s balloon construction, five people dead yet he’s still alive... see ya.
What is “balloon construction” in a building?
I think there probably will be some negligence charges against him...if nothing else, his business is dead. He had built/renovated the homes of many well-known and wealthy NYers, such as Donna Karan, for example.
This was a terrible thing, and anything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong. The boyfriend said he had two of the girls by the hand and was getting them out when they slipped away from him (he has burns, so probably there was a blast of heat and he let go) and ran back up the stairs. I suspect it was because they heard their grandparents calling and looking for them, since the grandparents had been sleeping on the second floor and the kids had been on the third floor, and the grandparents didn’t know the kids had gotten downstairs and were looking for them. One of the little girls was found with her grandmother, between the first and second floors, and another was found on the second floor, while the one of them was found next to a window on a pile of books that her grandfather had set up to help her get out. He had gone out the window first on to a second story roof so he could help her out, but he died before he could get her.
A horrible, tragic story - and a reminder to go check your smoke detectors right now.
however, I could never look that guy in the face again......let alone live with him....
this will haunt him for his entire life....