Drainage Contractor Found Guilty of Manslaughter

Thursday, November 7, 2019 | 0

The owner of a drainage construction company has been convicted of manslaughter, three years after two workers were killed when a trench collapsed and flooded in Boston.

Atlantic Drain Services and owner Kevin Otto, of Blackstone, Massachusetts, failed to use cave-in protections and put his workers in extreme danger, a Superior Court judge in Boston said last week, according to a Boston news report.

Prosecutors in the eight-day trial said Otto, who had been cited for safety violations in 2007 and 2012, also lied and produced false documentation after the cave-in in October 2016.

Workers Robert Higgins and Kelvin Mattocks were installing water and sewer lines in Boston's South End when a fire hydrant pipe broke, filling the 12-foot-deep trench in seconds.

Contractors are required to provide trench boxes or other measures to protect against trench collapses. Otto didn't, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company $1.47 million in 2017.

“The defendants had a responsibility to take measures ensuring the safety of their employees. Instead, they flouted those regulations time and again, without regard for the lives of the workers they recklessly and callously put at risk,” District Attorney Rachel Rollins said. “Today’s verdict will not ease the pain of the families of Mr. Higgins and Mr. Mattocks, but it sends a strong message that, in Suffolk County, those who willfully risk their employees’ lives will face criminal consequences.”

Otto faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of as much as $250,000. Sentencing is set for Dec. 4.