Brooklyn Landlord Who Illegally Subdivided 2-Family Home Into A No-Permt, 11-Unit Firetrap Housing 23 Tenants Faces Manslaughter Charges After Flames Swept Through Premises, Leaving One Dead, Nine Injured; Blaze Traced Back To Electric Water Cooler Plugged Into Overloaded System That Overheated, Exploded

From the Office of the Kings County, New York District Attorney:

• Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, together with [other New York City officials] announced that the owner of a Flatbush apartment building that was illegally subdivided has been indicted on manslaughter and other charges stemming from a fatal fire that left one tenant dead and nine others, including four children, injured.
  
  ***
  The District Attorney identified the defendant as Luckner Lorient, 78, of East Flatbush, Brooklyn. He was arraigned [...] on a 14-count indictment in which he is charged with second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, second-degree reckless endangerment, third-degree assault and endangering the welfare of a child. The defendant was ordered held on bail of $1 million cash or $2 million bond and ordered to return to court on August 10, 2016. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the top count.
  
  The District Attorney said that, according to the indictment, Lorient was the owner of 1434 Flatbush Avenue, a three-story, wood-frame building with a commercial space on the first floor, residential apartments on the second and third floors, and a cellar. The second and third floor apartments were designed to be one-family railroad apartments, but had allegedly been illegally converted by Lorient into SROs (single-room occupancy), with six separate rooms on the second floor and five separate rooms on the first floor. A total of 23 tenants occupied those 11 rooms.
  
  On November 19, 2014, at approximately 12:39 a.m., a fire enveloped 1434 Flatbush Avenue, according to the indictment, after a water cooler on the second floor ignited as a result of being connected to an overloaded electrical circuit. The fire spread quickly to the floor, walls and ceiling of a living room and simultaneously spread through the second floor hallway and up the stairs to the third floor. Twenty of the 23 tenants were home at the time, most of them sleeping.
  
  The tenants on the second floor escaped on their own or with the assistance of firefighters. The tenants on the third floor were either trapped or overcome by smoke and lost consciousness. Firefighters rescued six unconscious tenants from rooms and hallways on the third floor. Many of the tenants suffered moderate to severe smoke inhalation and three were seriously burned. A 24-year-old man, Jeff Frederic, died of smoke inhalation.
  
  Lorient, who was the pastor of a church located on the ground floor, is alleged to have recklessly disregarded safety issues, despite numerous violations and vacate orders variously issued by the New York City Department of Buildings, Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the New York City Fire Department dating back more than 10 years. It is alleged that Lorient filed false documents asserting he was no longer operating the building as an illegal SRO, but after inspections confirming his assertions he quickly converted the building back to the illegal SRO.
  
  Furthermore, it is alleged, because of the conversion there were power strips and multiple extension cords in every room, and stretched into hallways, and electrical outages due to overloads were a common occurrence – which Lorient knew because of notices of violations received from HPD.
  
  In fact, according to the investigation, nearly every room had a television and refrigerator and many had air conditioners, space heaters, microwaves, cell phone chargers, laptops and hot plates – seriously comprising the electrical system. A tenant on the second floor had an electric water cooler. The overloaded system caused a wire to the water cooler to overheat and erupt.
  
  In addition, the building failed to offer two means of egress, as required by law, and the single fire escape for the building was inoperable.

For more, see Flatbush Landlord Indicted for Manslaughter in Connection With Fatal Fire That Left One Dead and Nine Injured (Defendant Illegally Subdivided Apartments Leading to Unsafe Conditions).