Convicted contractor Campbell is relaxed, laughing, in video deposition
Former North Philadelphia demolition contractor Griffin Campbell spent Thursday as he has spent every day since Jan. 8 - serving a 15- to 30-year prison term for his role in the deadly 2013 collapse that crushed a Salvation Army store in Center City.
Former North Philadelphia demolition contractor Griffin Campbell spent Thursday as he has spent every day since Jan. 8 - serving a 15- to 30-year prison term for his role in the deadly 2013 collapse that crushed a Salvation Army store in Center City.
But he also appeared in a Philadelphia courtroom, telling his version of what happened that June 5 in a video of his sworn deposition recorded in January, two days after he was sentenced.
Campbell's deposition, whittled down to about nine hours, will continue Friday in the Common Pleas Court civil trial of consolidated lawsuits filed on behalf of the six people killed and 13 injured that day. One of the injured died 23 days later.
When he testified at his criminal trial last October, and again at his Jan. 8 sentencing, Campbell was often angry and argumentative.
In contrast, during the first of several days of closed-to-the-public deposition testimony that began Jan. 8, Campbell seemed relaxed and self-deprecating, at times laughing at how he got into his predicament.
He seemed to get emotional only once, when he was asked about Kim, his wife of 33 years, and their four daughters.
Campbell, 52, now in the state prison in Somerset in Southwestern Pennsylvania, said his involvement in the demolition of five buildings in the 2100 and 2200 blocks of Market Street was through Center City architect Plato A. Marinakos Jr.
"I trusted this guy and he promised me work - $300,000," Campbell testified. "Why wouldn't I take that opportunity?"
After the collapse, Marinakos, now 50, hired a lawyer and went to the District Attorney's Office. He got a grant of immunity from prosecution and testified against Campbell at his trial.
Campbell described his personal situation in 2011: bankrupt, owing $300,000 to a bank, and working to reinvent himself as a building contractor after 18 years running a food truck at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue.
He had spent about $10,000 buying, rehabbing, and leasing four dilapidated properties on Pike Street when a friend asked if he could handle the demolition of a burned-out three-story rowhouse on Erie Avenue near 16th Street.
Campbell said he did not have a city contractor's license, a company, equipment, or a corporate bank account, and had no experience in demolition.
But his friend had hired Marinakos, not as an architect but in his role as a licensed "expediter," who helped builders by going to the Department of Licenses and Inspections and obtaining the necessary permits for the work.
Campbell testified that he began the work after Marinakos obtained the demolition permit using the license identification number of another contractor.
A bond developed with Marinakos, Campbell said, and in late 2012 Marinakos approached him saying, "I got something big going on."
The project: demolishing five vacant and rundown buildings owned by New York real estate speculator Richard Basciano and his STB Investments Corp.
STB was planning a major retail-residential complex on the site and Marinakos said it could be the beginning of lucrative work for both of them, Campbell said.
Campbell said he was interested but told Marinakos he still did not have a license, and had never bid a major project, or even drafted and signed a contract.
"He said, 'I'll handle everything. I'll do the bids, I'll do the contracts. You don't have to worry. You already have the job,' " Campbell testified.
On June 5, 2013, an unsupported three- to four-story wall remaining from STB's Hoagie City building toppled and crushed the Salvation Army thrift store at 22nd and Market Streets.
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