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Jury awards $625,000 in house blast
YOUNGSTOWN
A jury has awarded $625,000 in damages as a result of a vacant house explosion on the city’s South Side that destroyed an occupied home next door and heavily damaged a church two lots away.
In a unanimous Thursday verdict, the five-woman, three-man jury awarded $525,000 to the Rev. Mary Austin, pastor of Greater Mount Calvary Baptist Church, and $100,000 to American Family Insurance Co. of Madison, Wis., which paid a claim from the residents of the adjacent home.
The jury issued the verdict at the end of a three-day trial before Magistrate Dominic DeLaurentis of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
A natural-gas leak caused the vacant house at 535 Cohasset Drive, which was owned by Choice Homes of Youngstown, to explode July 31, 2013, after thieves stole an appliance from it, according to Atty. David L. Engler, who represented the church pastor.
The jury found Choice Homes negligent in failing to have the gas turned off when the occupants moved out.
The explosion caused no injuries.
Despite being heavily damaged by the blast, the 1910-vintage church continued to function until its roof collapsed, and the city condemned and demolished it in March 2015, Engler added.
Immediately after the blast, fire officials said the house that exploded was vacant, but still had natural gas and electric service.
A fire investigator said the gas stove was missing from that house, and that the explosion and fire originated where the stove had been in the kitchen.
Another vacant Choice home had been destroyed by a similar explosion two years earlier on Atkinson Avenue on the city’s East Side. In that case, a fire investigator said the stove also was missing, and police arrested the thieves.
Neither Choice Homes’ director, Phil Smith, nor its lawyer, Paul Ricard of North Canton, could be reached to comment on the verdict and whether it will be appealed.