Thomas Fuller, Lauren Hepler and Tim Arango

The fire tore through a late-night party in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood on Dec. 2, 2016, in a building that had been transformed into a ramshackle artist collective known as Ghost Ship.

Many of the building’s residents were living there in violation of zoning laws, and the tragedy highlighted the glaring failures of the city’s leaders to enforce building and fire codes. The inferno also became an emblem of the rising cost of living in the Bay Area, which led so many people to seek shelter in a rundown building.

The two men on trial were Derick Almena, 49, the master tenant and leaseholder, and Max Harris, 29, described by prosecutors as Almena’s right hand in managing the warehouse, who collected rent from tenants and arranged events. They each were charged with 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter and faced a maximum of 39 years in prison.

Harris was acquitted, and the jury told Alameda County Superior Court Judge Trina Thompson that they could not reach a verdict on similar charges against Almena.

“I’m just stunned,” Alberto Vega, 36, whose brother Alex Vega was one of the victims, said outside the courtroom. “I feel sick to my stomach. It was obvious what rules were broken.”

Ten jurors favored conviction of Almena and two were opposed, according to Brian Getz, one of Almena’s defense lawyers. A hearing will be held next month to discuss a new trial, he said.

The jury’s decision comes after a tortuous deliberation process that began in July, but was interrupted last month when Thompson dismissed three jurors for unspecified misconduct, replacing them with three alternates. The judge then ordered the jury to begin deliberating from scratch. The trial featured three months of testimony.

Many of the residents living in the Ghost Ship warehouse were artists who had jammed the space with flammable items — “fence boards, shingles, window frames, wooden sculptures, tapestries, piano,” according to court documents — that became kindling for the fire. Many of the victims were attending the party on the second floor, and were unable to escape down the staircase.

The fire quickly consumed the building, which was built in 1930 and was once a milk bottling plant, even though there was a fire station less than 200 yards away. A local newspaper, The East Bay Times, won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the fire, which “exposed the city’s failure to take actions that might have prevented it,” according to the prize committee.

In closing arguments, the prosecutor called the warehouse a “death trap,” and dismissed the defense’s claims that arsonists might have been responsible for the blaze. Witnesses had testified that there were no smoke alarms or sprinklers, and that Almena once laughed off the suggestion that the warehouse was dangerously susceptible to fire.

The grief of family members of the victims, many of whom packed into an overflow room during the proceedings, permeated the trial, with the prosecution reading the names of each of the 36 people who died, and showing final text messages from victims, saying goodbye to loved ones before they perished.

“I can just be at home, and all of a sudden I cry, thinking about something,” David Gregory, who lost his daughter, Michela, in the fire, told the Los Angeles Times. “I come to court — at least I’m learning what’s going on. I’ve been committed to coming to learn everything, as much as I can, about this case. I want answers.”

Lawyers for Almena and Harris built a defense that cast blame for the fire on the landlord, and on city officials who had visited the property over the years and had never condemned it as a fire hazard. Investigators never determined the exact cause of the fire, but it was widely suspected to have been ignited after an electrical malfunction.

“If the standard of guilt here is what a reasonable person would do, well, then, are the police not reasonable people?” Carmen Brito, a former tenant of Ghost Ship, told reporters during the trial. “Are the firefighters not reasonable people? Social workers? All of them seemed to think it was safe, so why would we have thought anything different?”

Taking the stand in his own defense, Almena spoke about being in solitary confinement and gaining 60 pounds while in jail awaiting trial. “I’m just so sad,” he said on the stand, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The families of the victims wanted city officials and the landlord to be prosecuted, but at the end of the investigation, only Almena and Harris faced criminal charges. The two men were arrested in June 2017.

Last July, prosecutors announced that they had reached a plea deal with Almena and Harris, in which the defendants agreed to plead no contest to the involuntary manslaughter charges. Under the deal, Almena would serve 9 years in prison, and Harris would serve 6 years.

But a month later, after an outcry from families who saw the deal as too lenient, a judge rejected the agreement, setting up the trial, which began in late April.

In addition to the criminal case, families are continuing to pursue civil litigation against the city and the landlord, Chor Nar Siu Ng, who bought the building in 1988.

After the verdict was announced, defense lawyers criticized what they described as inaction by the Oakland city government to address the conditions at the root of the tragedy: high housing costs and lax inspections of hazardous living conditions.

“That’s been the biggest tragedy here,” Curtis Briggs, a lawyer for Harris, said. “Not one Oakland city official has stepped forward and said, ‘This is how we are going to fix it.’”

Many relatives of the victims attended the three-month trial, and some spoke to reporters outside the courthouse.

“It’s not about retribution, revenge, being out for blood or any of that,” Chris Allen, who lost his sister Amanda in the fire and came from Boston for the trial, told reporters Wednesday after closing arguments. “We’re here for accountability.”

Vega, whose brother died in the fire, said after the verdict Thursday that he was not sure he would attend a second trial of Almena, if there is one.

“It’s all just so much,” he said. “No one is happy right now.”

This article originally appeared in

One Acquittal and One Hung Jury for Ghost Ship Defendants

SAN FRANCISCO — A jury in Oakland, California, acquitted one man and could not reach a decision on a second man’s role in a 2016 warehouse blaze that killed 36 people, one of the deadliest structural fires in recent American history.

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Thomas Fuller, Lauren Hepler and Tim Arango

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One Acquittal and One Hung Jury for Ghost Ship Defendants