OAKLAND, Calif. — The master tenant of an Oakland warehouse where 36 people perished in a 2016 fire has pleaded guilty to the deaths.
The plea Friday allows Derick Almena to avoid a second trial after the first ended in a hung jury.
Almena is accused of being criminally negligent when he illegally converted an industrial Oakland warehouse into a residence and event space for artists. They say he stuffed the building with flammable materials, and it had no smoke detectors or sprinklers.
The first trial, which started in 2017, led to the acquittal in 2019 of Max Harris, who was also charged with 36 counts of manslaughter in this case.
Almena and Harris had pleaded no contest to manslaughter and were set to be sentenced last year to nine and six years in prison, respectively. But a judge threw out their pleas after many of the victims' families objected.
Almena received a 12-year sentence, but he likely won't return to jail because of the years he already spent behind bars and credit for good behavior. Almena has been in jail since 2017; he was released in May 2020 due to the pandemic.
