Ghost Ship warehouse founder sentenced to nine years in fire that killed 36

The founder of a California artists’ warehouse that burned down in a massive fire that killed 36 people five years ago was sentenced Monday to nine years in prison and three years on post-surveillance release, authorities said .

Alameda District Attorney’s Office Nancy O’Malley said in a statement that Derick Almena, the main tenant of the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, Calif., Could serve the remainder of his sentence at home with a GPS monitor.

In a statement read to court by Almena’s lawyer Tony Serra, Almena apologized for her role in the fire on December 2, 2016, saying: “I am very afraid to say more”, reported the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’m sick of shame. I am sorry. My shame cannot be a defense against what I am responsible for. “

Almena pleaded guilty to 36 counts of manslaughter in January, more than two years after a jury deadlocked on the charges in an earlier trial. The same jury acquitted a co-accused, Max Harris, who had also been charged with manslaughter.

Almena and Harris had agreed to an earlier plea deal and were to be sentenced to nine and six years, respectively, when Judge James Cramer rejected the deal, saying Almena had not accepted “full responsibility and remorse. Of the fire.

Almena rented the warehouse in 2013 to build theater sets, but prosecutors said he had started subletting sections to other artists. Harris is said to have helped convert the building into a living space, organize massive parties, and collect rent.

They turned the warehouse into a “death trap” filled with flammable items, blocked exits and no fire alarms or sprinklers, prosecutors said.

An Almena defense attorney had argued that a company that allowed the kind of extreme wealth and poverty that coexist in the San Francisco Bay Area was to blame for the blaze.

“People like Derek take a warehouse and get people out of the gutter and put a roof over their heads and don’t have the money to furnish it under Oakland laws,” attorney Brian Getz said. why it happened. “

Last year, the city of Oakland agreed to pay more than $ 32 million to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of the victims of the fire, including $ 23.5 million for the families of those who died and $ 9.2 million for a survivor who sustained serious injuries.