At Ghost Ship trial, victims’ relatives face down the man they blame for the fire

Derick Almena pressed his hand against a picture of his wife and children, staring at the photo and then out toward the courtroom with a solemn gaze, visibly aware of what he had to lose.

His defense attorney, J. Tony Serra, asked Almena if he would “ever expose them to any risk?” Almena said he would not.

Colleen Dolan scoffed from the gallery, staring a hole through the 49-year-old. As far as she was concerned, Almena had no problem exposing people to risk — 36 people, specifically, including her daughter, Chelsea.

“Every time that picture goes up, he tries to leave it there for a long time so that it’s imprinted on the jury’s memory. He will use that as the last picture he posts up on the easel and then leave it there,” she said. “It’s obscene to us.”

In the 2 ½ years since flames swallowed the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, the families of the fire’s three dozen victims have waited for someone to be held responsible. Last week, the man who operated what prosecutors have long termed a “fire trap” took the stand in his own defense, trying to strike a delicate balance between remorse and defiance.

During several days of questioning from his own attorneys and Alameda County prosecutors, Almena proved to be mournful, combative and confounding, sometimes needing seven or eight exchanges before answering a lawyer’s yes or no question.

He told the court that he’d been placed on suicide watch, that he’d gained 60 pounds and that his health was in decline. But while he tried to cut a pitiful figure, he was equally pugnacious when trying to convince the jury that the city and the family who owned the warehouse were as much, if not more, to blame for the fatal blaze than him.

When Almena first took the stand late Monday, he appeared to shrink away from eye contact, quivering as he spoke. He said “yes” when Serra asked him if he was “responsible.” While the remark might have seemed a precursor to an apology, none would follow. Instead, Almena began to ramble, the first of many ambiguous replies he would provide to a room occupied largely by people looking for concrete answers.

“I instigated something. I built something. I dreamed something,” Almena said of his role in the creation of the Ghost Ship. “I’m responsible for having the idea … spiritually, morally, responsible for it.”

Almena and Max Harris, the Ghost Ship’s so-called creative director, were charged with 36 counts of manslaughter in 2017 after prosecutors claimed that because of what they called the pair’s negligence and shoddy oversight of the Oakland art installation it was turned into a tinderbox with no ready means of escape.

Almena, a Los Angeles native and photographer who sometimes also went by the name “Derick Ion,” had leased the space for about three years before the fire and turned it into an artists collective that soon doubled as a rental property.

Prosecutors have said at least 25 people were illegally living in the space, which they allege was not properly outfitted with smoke detectors, fire alarms or a fire suppression system.

The warehouse was filled from “floor to ceiling” with sculptures, drum kits, pianos and other wooden and flammable materials, which prosecutors say formed a deadly labyrinth. Almena and Harris were set to be sentenced to nine and six years in prison, respectively, after pleading no contest to manslaughter last year, but a judge threw out their pleas after many of the victims’ families spoke out.

On the stand last week, Almena consistently deflected blame for the condition of the building to Chor Ng and her children, Eva and Kai, who operated as the building’s landlords. Under repeated questioning about the warehouse’s fire safeguards or its need for electrical upkeep, he told the court that he had pleaded with the family to make necessary improvements.

“I signed a lease for something that shouldn’t have been rented to an arts collective,” Almena said, adding that he was “tricked” by the Ng family, who have repeatedly declined to comment.

Almena also spent considerable time on the stand asking why Oakland officials hadn’t interceded if the warehouse was so unsafe. He said officials with the city’s police and fire departments, as well as child welfare officials and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, had gone inside the space 33 times between mid-2014 and the day of the fire. None warned him that the conditions could lead to a fire, Almena testified.

Public records released by the city in February 2017 show that Oakland had received at least 10 code enforcement complaints about the Ghost Ship. But despite numerous claims that the building was unsafe and possibly contained faulty wiring, city officials never moved to shut it down.

David Gregory, who has attended nearly every court hearing since Almena and Harris were arrested to stand up for his deceased daughter, Michela, said the city is far from blameless in the fiasco. But he has dismissed Almena’s apologetic testimony as nothing more than a defense ploy.

“I don’t think he’s remorseful like he portrays to be. I think it’s just an act. They’re being totally coached by their attorneys,” Gregory said. “They’re just trying to create doubt to get a mistrial.”

Grace Kim, the cousin of 29-year-old fire victim Ara Jo, said that in some ways attending the trial has been beneficial. Kim flew in from Washington, D.C., hoping to catch the closing arguments, but instead she wound up facing down Almena. In some ways, she’s thankful Almena’s plea was rejected last year because the trial has revealed additional information about her cousin’s death. But Almena’s swings from apologizing to nitpicking have proved annoying, she said.

“What I hear is he’s quibbling over semantics, telling the D.A. that he doesn’t like the question the way it was phrased or the particular word the D.A. was using…. It took almost half a day to get him to answer one specific series of questions,” she said.

Serra said Almena isn’t trying to deflect but rather hoping to make the jury aware of the combination of forces that led to the fire. The case, however, belongs in a civil courtroom, he said.

“I hope that the families of the victims get millions of dollars. They deserve millions of dollars,” Serra said. “But my client does not deserve to be criminally prosecuted.”

During cross-examination, Alameda County prosecutor Autrey James continued to try to corner Almena with the fact that he ran the warehouse’s day-to-day operations, pointing out that he collected rent from other artists, negotiated how much they would pay and directed various people to perform electrical work and other maintenance on the building.

A back-and-forth ensued about whether Almena or the Ngs were the true landlord, and at one point, James reminded Almena that he’d told a TV station in 2017 that his defense would be predicated on “pointing and blaming.”

“I don’t want to blame anybody,” Almena said, marking one of the rare times anyone in the courtroom laughed.

The rest of the week was marked by pain. On Monday, a little more than an hour into Almena’s testimony, Dolan could be seen helping another one of the victims’ relatives out of the room in tears. Gregory’s sister-in-law, Karen Frieholtz, said listening to the testimony was like “reopening the wound, every single day.”

Gregory’s birthday was Wednesday, she said. He remained seated in court, staring at Almena.

The defense rested Thursday afternoon, and Alameda County Superior Court Judge Trina Thompson said she expects closing arguments to begin July 29. The case could be in the hands of a jury by early August.

Dolan says she’ll come back every day until there’s a verdict. But the one thing she wanted from Almena, he hasn’t given.

“I just wanted him to give one straight answer. I wanted him to acknowledge that he could have done something differently,” she said. “But he’ll never do that.”

james.queally@latimes.com

Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in California.