Ghost Ship tenant ‘didn’t feel safe sleeping there,’ quickly left

OAKLAND — A woman who in 2014 moved into an Airstream trailer in the Ghost Ship warehouse was terrified by the mounds of wood scraps and shoddy electrical work, and she gave notice she was moving out after only three weeks, she testified Thursday in the fatal Ghost Ship warehouse fire.

“I didn’t feel safe sleeping there because I thought it was possible that the place could burn down,” Jennifer Turner said on the witness stand during the trial of Derrick Almena and Max Harris, who are both charged with 36 counts of manslaughter in the deaths of dance partygoers who died in a December 2016 fire at the East Oakland warehouse.

Extension cords hung from the ceilings, she said. She was asked to purchase a 50-foot extension cord to power her trailer. It was hung from the ceiling and connected to a power distribution box — or spider box — outside.

Turner was questioned on Wednesday and Thursday in the third and fourth days of testimony. Alameda County Assistant District Attorney Casey Bates’ questions painted the warehouse as dysfunctional and chaotic. Defense attorneys, in their cross-examination, seemed to be trying to cast doubt on Turner’s knowledge of what the space may have been like at the time of the fire; she hadn’t stepped foot inside since early 2015.

Turner moved into the warehouse — known at the time as Satya Yuga — in November 2014, after seeing a Craigslist ad to rent out one of two trailers on the first floor of the Fruitvale warehouse for $600 a month, she said. The ad was titled “seeking surrealist pirate theater,” Turner said.

Upon moving in, she paid a non-refundable $600 “buy in” fee — which she was told would be used for making improvements to the warehouse itself — as well as the first month’s rent.

Nearly immediately, she noticed safety issues, she said. There were piles of wood scraps, as well as furniture and other “flammable material” scattered throughout the space. There were at least five trailers parked on the first floor of the building, she said, some of which had people living in them.

There were two staircases to the second floor, she said. One that was built into the warehouse and one that was strewn together with pallets that she described as “rickety.” Almena and his family were the only ones who lived upstairs, she said, so she didn’t go up to the second floor much.

Apart from the safety concerns, she was put off by the shower and bathroom situations as well as the noise. The bathrooms were dirty, and “a place I didn’t want to set foot in,” she said. She ended up taking showers at a nearby 24 Hour Fitness where she had a membership.

Almena would often work on projects during the early morning hours, and also get into screaming matches with people, Turner said, making it hard for her to sleep.

There were a few nights when she would stay in her car to get some sleep, she said.

Turner testified the warehouse lacked the community feel that Almena had pitched her when she was first thinking of moving in. She felt as though her $600 deposit would never actually be used to turn the place into the “surrealist pirate theater” mentioned in the ad, she said.

The final straw for Turner, though, was seeing police outside the warehouse in late 2014. Almena had some sort of squabble with someone else who lived there, and somebody — the defense, during cross-examination, said it was  says it was Almena — called the police. Though she didn’t see the police officers go inside or know the full story of why they were there, seeing police there made her feel anxious, she said. She then paid her $600 rent for December and said she would be out in 30 days.

Another former tenant, Jose Avalos, also took the witness stand Thursday, although prosecutors had only begun asking him questions before the day’s lunch break.