Owner of $1.8M New York vacation rental avoids jail time after sisters die in fire from shoddy home work
A Hamptons luxury homeowner whose shoddy electrical work caused the Long Island, New York, house fire that killed two Maryland sisters will not serve any jail time after striking a plea deal with prosecutors.
Jillian Wiener, 21, and her 19-year-old sister Lindsay were vacationing with their terminally ill father at Peter Miller's $1.8 million Sag Harbor home in August 2022 when the fatal fire broke out, Suffolk County prosecutors wrote in a press release.
Miller, 56, copped to building an illegal outdoor kitchen that overloaded the home's electrical system and failing to install smoke detectors with functioning back-up batteries.
Kitchen vents blocked by a wooden frame created a firetrap that stranded the two women in an upstairs bedroom, prosecutors said.
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Jillian and Lindsay's father Lewis, a 59-year-old federal prosecutor dying of pancreatic cancer, survived the house fire along with their 56-year-old mother Alisa and 23-year-old brother Zachary, the New York Post reported.
After pleading guilty to negligent homicide on Monday, Miller will face three years' probation and 200 hours of community service, his attorney Edward Burke told the Post. Miller's wife, 55-year-old Pamela, who managed the $8,000-per-week summer rental, was sentenced to 100 hours of community service on the misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment.
A spokesperson for the district attorney's office told Greater Long Island that the couple will not face jail time as part of their plea deal.
In court on Monday, Miller tearfully admitted to installing the illegal wiring on the property himself, saying that it had never been inspected for safety, the Daily Mail reported.
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The family had attempted to use the rental's outdoor charcoal grill on the evening of Aug. 1, prosecutors said. When the food failed to cook, the family shifted to the kitchen, and turned in for the night after their dinner around 11:30 p.m.
Around 3:30 a.m., the women's parents awoke to the sound of glass shattering, and yelled for their children to get out of the house when they saw the fire raging. While the parents were able to escape on the ground floor, Zachary was also trapped in his room, and climbed out onto a roof before jumping from the second story, prosecutors said.
Lewis burned the bottoms of his feet trying to get back into the house to save his daughters, but was unable to penetrate the thick smoke and flames, prosecutors said. The incident left the surviving family "broken" and "haunted," according to the press release.
Jillian, the elder Wiener sister, was an incoming senior at the University of Michigan, prosecutors said, while Lindsay was a sophomore at Tulane University.
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Before their arrests on Aug. 22, the Millers were charged with 29 code violations in Southhampton Town Court following the incident, including failing to obtain a rental permit prior to renting, having a transient rental when prohibited by law and installing an electrical outlet without a proper electrical box, authorities said.
The Millers' attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Wiener family has also filed a wrongful death suit against the couple, the Post reported.
"First and foremost, our hearts go out to the Wiener family, who lost these young women in this tragic fire. Such a loss is unimaginable, and our community mourns with them," Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said in the release. "We take all matters involving housing regulations very seriously, as they are crucial for public safety. If you have a rental home, you have a duty to make sure that it is safe."