By The TimesLedger
We are watching closely to see how District Attorney Brown will handle the investigation of the fire at a hardware store in Astoria that killed three hero firefighters. At the moment, no one is pressuring the prosecutor to find someone to blame for the blaze. The people of Queens are ready to accept that this fire was nothing more than a tragic, unforeseeable accident.
According to one theory, the fire started when two teenage boys, 13 and 15 years old, accidentally tipped over an open can of gasoline that poured down a ramp into the basement of the hardware store. The pilot light of a water heater then ignited the fumes from the gas. That's one version. Another more troubling version holds that the two boys were engaged in a newly popular form of graffiti in which vandals use gasoline to burn their “tag” onto a wall or, in this case, the side of building. If that's the case, the fire was the indirect result of a criminal act.
In either version, the fire was a “tragic accident.” The problem for DA Brown is that the last time a firefighter was killed as the result of a “tragic accident” he charged the man who caused the accident with murder and sent him to prison for life. Edwin Smith, a homeless crack addict, was huddled with his girlfriend in the basement of an abandoned Jamaica house when a makeshift candle set the house on fire. A young firefighter, another hero, was killed as he looked for victims in the blaze.
Earlier this year, Smith's murder conviction was overturned and he agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. He will spend the remainder of a 10-year sentence in prison for his role in a “tragic accident.”
There is an eerie similarity here that should cause Mr. Brown to lose some sleep. If the graffiti account is true, Brown could charge the boys as adults with murder under the state's designated felony law. Even if they were doing graffiti, no one wants to see a mistake ruin the lives of these two young boys.
But Mr. Brown set an ugly precedent when he tried Mr. Smith for murder. He argued that Smith was “reckless” when he lit his makeshift candle and placed it too close to a blanket hung on the basement wall. Smith, in the mind of the DA, compounded his crime when he fled the house and did not stay around to advise the firefighters that there were no more squatters trapped inside the house.
Although the facts have yet to be determined in the Astoria fire, it is at least possible that in both cases deadly fires were caused indirectly by criminal behavior. In the case of Smith, the fire happened because two homeless crack addicts were trespassing. In Astoria, the fire may have started because a teenage boy was using gasoline to write graffiti. Neither crime in itself is particularly serious. In both cases, the results were extremely serious.
DA Brown was wrong to charge Smith with murder. And Brown should not be looking at murder or manslaughter charges in the Astoria fire.
Editorail: Heroes
The Father's Day death of three Queens firefighters is an unspeakable tragedy that has touched the hearts of all New Yorkers. The TimesLedger extends its sincerest sympathy to the families of the victims and to their fellow firefighters.
Each time a firefighter falls, we are reminded that there are men and women who willingly risk their lives on a daily basis, brave people who walk into a burning building with the hope of saving lives. There were far more than three heroes at that Astoria fire and we stand in their debt.
