Prosecutors are taking legal action against the owner of the building where a roof collapsed and killed two Chicago firefighters a year ago.
The Cook County state's attorney's office says the owner failed to comply with court-ordered requirements to repair and secure the vacant building. It has filed a petition for criminal contempt of court.
Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of the deaths of firefighters Edward Stringer and Corey Ankum. They were among more than a dozen firefighters searching the abandoned laundry at 1744 E. 75th Street when the roof came crashing down.
Seventeen other firefighters were hurt in the department's deadliest fire in more than a dozen years.
Stringer's brother, Michael Torres, said he and his family have felt all along that criminal charges should be filed against the building's owner.
"I believe that they were criminally negligent in not securing their building, and as a result two families lost loved ones and the city lost two dedicated firefighters," Torres said in an interview this morning.
Torres said the building became a "deathtrap" through the owner's failure to make needed repairs. And while he welcomed the charges, he acknowledged they won't help ease his family's suffering.
"It doesn't really change anything for us," Torres said. "It won't bring our loved one back or the Ankums' loved one back. But we think that should the owners of that building be found guilty, a strong message would be sent, and maybe it would prevent other families from going through what we're going through."
After the fire, the building owner told the Tribune that after his South Shore laundry had failed six years before, he gave up on the broken-down building that he and a relative had been struggling to hold on to.
Taxes went unpaid and the building's problems stacked up, among them a wooden truss roof that city inspectors found defective in 2007 and ordered repaired.
"I'm at a loss for words about the whole situation," the owner told the Tribune during a brief telephone interview after the fire. "I feel bad about the firemen getting hurt."
In 2007, as the co-owers struggled to make payments on a $60,000 loan on the building, the city cited them for 14 separate building code violations, records show.
The roof held "additional weights" that were improperly attached to the triangular wooden trusses that made up its underbelly, according to a 2007 court complaint. Violations also included cracked walls, broken and loose windows, a crumbling chimney, and a stagnant pool of sewage in the basement.
The owner, who also faced foreclosure in 2007, entered into a compliance agreement with the city several months later, promising to pay $1,000 in fines and keep the building in shape, according to records.
City officials said at the time there was no record that the fines were ever paid. It was not known if the issues cited in 2007 had any role in the firefighter's deaths.
The owner staved off foreclosure but said he has struggled financially since the economy dipped and another one of his laundry businesses began to suffer. He acknowledged that he had a hard time maintaining the 75th Street building.
City officials and neighbors said the building had long been a nuisance, attracting homeless people who took refuge in the vacant, warehouse-like structure.
Squatters had repeatedly broken into the building, according to the owner of a neighboring carwash, who said he has called police at least a dozen times in recent years to report trespassers.
The owner said maintaining the building had been "a tiresome battle." Though it had been boarded up several times, "somehow they managed to break in," he said. "I don't know how to deal with that."
When firefighters arrived at the scene a year ago, the front of the building was boarded up but the back was open, Fire Cmdr. Robert Hoff said.
The owner said that when the laundry in the building went under, he stopped paying property taxes. He said he assumed, mistakenly, that his tax delinquency meant the city had taken over the property.
He also has faced federal tax problems. The IRS in 2000 issued a lien against the property for $10,865 he owed in U.S. income taxes, and again in 2007 for $4,050 in unpaid taxes, records show.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
