NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- The manslaughter trial against the landlord of an East Village apartment building destroyed in a gas explosion and two others got underway Monday.
The March 2015 blast killed two young men, injured 13 others and leveled a city block.
The aftermath led to concerns about the city's housing boom and unscrupulous landlords cutting corners while rents rose.
On Monday, prosecutors will begin presenting their case against the landlord Maria Hrynenko, her general contractor and an unlicensed plumber who are accused of tampering with a gas line, creating what Assistant District Attorney Randolph Clark described as a virtual bomb.
The landlord's son, who prosecutors accuse of signing off on the work, died two years ago at age 31.
Clark says greed caused the deaths of a bus boy and a recent college graduate at the Sushi Park Restaurant.
Hrynenko's attorney, Michael Burke, called the explosion a tragic accident, saying it originated not in the gas line but in the restaurant where employees had complained of a gas smell for months before the explosion.
He pointed out that the fire marshal closed the case as an accidental fire and accused the district attorney's office of squandering a half-million dollars in taxpayer money for an independent investigator to point the finger of blame at Hrynenko.
One of the victims was on a lunch date at the sushi restaurant on the ground floor. Twenty-three-year-old Nicholas Figueroa's father still visits the site every day.
His mother, Anna, tells the New York Times the pain never goes away.