A Manhattan jury and a presiding state Supreme Court judge soon will decide whether three construction managers on trial since April for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in a fatal high-rise fire will face jail time.
After 10 weeks of testimony and attorney summations that differed sharply on who was to blame for the 2007 Deutsche Bank blaze in which two New York City firefighters died, jurors began deliberating on June 16. They are weighing the fates of two of the defendants: site safety manager Jeffrey Melofchik, 49, a former executive of project contractor Bovis Lend Lease, and Salvatore DePaola, 56, foreman for site asbestos-cleanup subcontractor, The John Galt Corp.