A Brooklyn construction site owner has been acquitted of manslaughter in connection with a day laborer who was crushed to death while digging a trench.
William Lattarulo also was found not guilty Wednesday of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment in the 2008 death of Lauro Ortega.
Prosecutors had sought to prove that Lattarulo was aware of the dangers at the site and ignored them. Part of a wall of a building next to the site collapsed, spilling rubble on Ortega, killing him.
Lattarulo still faces two civil lawsuits. One was filed by the victim's family and another by a family that lived in a house next door to the site that eventually had to be razed.
Copyright AP - Associated Press
