Five people indicted in deadly New York City building explosion

A law enforcement source tells NY1 charges are pending for five people including a contractor in connection with last year’s building explosion in the East Village.

After a almost 11-month-long investigation into the Second Avenue blast that occurred on March 26 at 121 Second Ave., authorities have arrested and charged Maria Hrynenko, 56, her son Michael Hrynenko, 30, Athanasios Ioannidis, 59, Dilber Kukic, 40, and Andrew Trombettas, 57, in connection to the deadly gas explosion.

The explosion at 121 Second Avenue in the East Village set alight the property and its neighboring structures, eventually bringing down three buildings and seriously damaging a fourth.

Vance blamed the ensuing carnage on “a foreseeable, preventable and completely avoidable gas explosion”.

The blast and ensuing seven-alarm fire killed two people and leveled three buildings in a heavily traveled section of the East Village in March 2015, scattering debris for blocks and forcing street closures.

DNAinfo New York first reported that on March 27, 2015 that Kukic, whose construction firm did work on the property at 121 Second Ave. prior to the blast, was in the building with the owner’s son, Michael trying to find the source of a gas odor in the basement when the room blew up, throwing both men to the floor.

Vance spelled out a detailed chronology of the tragic events, which began in 2013 when Maria Hrynenko hired Kukic as a general contractor to renovate apartments in the building, which housed four floors of apartments and a street-level Japanese restaurant known as Sushi Park. Trombettas, who allegedly provided Ionnidis with an illegal license, has been charged with offering a false instrument for filing. At the same time, Kukic and Michael Hrynenko opened gas valves in the basement of 121 Second Avenue “in order to bring the gas up to the apartments, because if ConEd were to perform a building wide pressure test to the system, the only way to pass the test was to make sure the gas was open”, Vance said. “Development, construction, and renovation is happening across the City at breakneck speed”. After Con Ed discovered the hookup and turned off the building gas, another hookup was secretly done to a gas line at 119 Second Ave., which also was owned by Maria Hrynenko, officials charged. Instead of going through the proper channels to obtain that permission, according to Vance, the group of defendants devised and carried out a plan to use tubes to siphon gas away from the legitimate hookup, used by a restaurant on the ground floor of the building, and into the apartments above. “In this market, the temptation for property owners, contractors, and managers to take dangerous- and, in some instances, deadly – shortcuts has never been greater”.

At 2pm on Thursday – an hour before the explosion – contractors met with Con Edison to check on some ongoing work to upgrade gas service in the building. In total, the incident killed two people and injured more than 13 others. Patrons and workers in the restaurant smelled gas and alerted Maria Hrynenko.

Nigro said the explosion showed how a “callous choice to put money before common sense and safety” destroyed lives and devastated a community.

If convicted of the highest charge of manslaughter in the second degree, Hrynenko, her son, Ioannidis, and Kukic face up to 15 years in prison.

Officials are expected to announce the charges at a news conference later today.