Prosecutors lowered the boom on accused killer crane-rigger William Rapetti yesterday — blaming him for a single worn-out polyester strap that snapped 18 stories above East 51st Street, setting off a cascade of plummeting metal braces that toppled the entire rig, killing seven.
“The crane collapse of March 15, 2008, was a tragedy, but it was no accident,” prosecutor Sean Sullivan told a Manhattan judge in opening statements in Rapetti’s manslaughter trial.
The collapse of the 200-foot-high tower crane killed one person on the ground and six workers, including operator Wayne Bleidner. His widow, Denise, and son Robert sat in court a row behind Rapetti, braving gruesome descriptions of their loved one’s death.
Bleidner, 51, was helpless at the controls when his cab and boom smashed down onto a four-story brownstone on East 50th Street.
Until yesterday, Rapetti’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, had suggested operator error by Bleidner might have been to blame for the collapse — a suggestion the family had found abhorrent.
Prosecutors presented this chain of events, which they said was confirmed by federal, state and city investigators: One worn-out strap, inspected and OK’d by Rapetti, snaps, stressing three other wrongly rigged straps which also snap. The chain of failures send an 11,000-pound metal brace into free fall, which in its wake severed all the other bracing securing the crane to the construction.
Aidala presented Rapetti’s own version, blaming the collapse on “something” going wrong further down the crane.
It could have been engineer Peter Stroh’s ordering of quick-fix welds on any of the braces, Aidala said. To save time and money, the crane was not bolted into cement and bedrock, but instead allowed to rest atop two I-beams, Aidala said — blaming the Department of Buildings for OKing such an arrangement.
“Almost everyone else in this case messed up,” Aidala said, turning to point at his client before adding, “He didn’t.”