The head of Philadelphia’s firefighters' union attacked the decision not to charge the hasidic owners of an abandoned mill that killed two firefighters during a 2012 fire "shameful.…There are no words that can describe the absolute frustration felt by the firefighters and paramedics. There will be no closure for the families, and no one will be held accountable.”

Firefighters Attack Grand Jury, D.A. Over Lack Of Criminal Charges For Deadly Fire In Hasidic-Owned Slum

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com



The head of Philadelphia’s firefighters' union attacked the decision not to charge the hasidic owners of an abandoned mill that killed two firefighters during a 2012 fire "shameful.”

“There are no words that can describe the absolute frustration felt by the firefighters and paramedics. There will be no closure for the families, and no one will be held accountable,” Joe Schulle told the Philadelphia Inquirer.



After two years of investigating the fire, a grand jury Monday said the mill’s hasidic owners, Nahman and Michael Lichtenstein, the husband and son of the haredi daily newspaper Hamodia’s publisher Ruth Lichtenstein, let the building become an unsecured "firetrap" but found no way to level criminal charges.



Schulle also attacked District Attorney Seth Williams for failing to prosecute the slumlords.



Williams rejected the criticism, pointing out that his office had prosecuted "the Catholic Church hierarchy" for crimes related to the its child sex abuse scandal.



"We are not afraid to prosecute anyone for any offense, and we have done that repeatedly," Williams reportedly said.



According to Williams, the biggest impediment to prosecuting the New York-based Lichtensteins was that the cause of the fire was never determined.



But both Williams and the grand jury were highly critical of the Lichtensteins who failed to respond to the city's notices of code violations and who did not secure the property against drug addicts, transients, scavengers, and squatters.



Ed McCann, Williams' first assistant district attorney, said it was likely one of those intruders started the deadly fire, but “that's not enough in a court of law" to get a conviction.



"I can't stand in front of a judge and say the fire was caused because the owners didn't secure the property. That's a threshold issue. If we can't do that, we don't have a prosecution.…If we had evidence that the fire was started by someone who broke into the property…then we might be in a different situation right now” McCann reportedly said.



Drawing parallels to an earlier case, Schulle pointed out that the Lichtensteins’ negligence made them legally culpable no matter who started the fire.



"We understand that it's a difficult case, but it's a fight worth fighting,” Schulle reportedly said.

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