BOSTON, Feb. 23, 2017—The individual and corporate defendants in the deaths of Robert Higgins and Kelvin Mattocks in a South End trench collapse were arraigned today and their trial has been scheduled for early next year, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

The Boston-based ATLANTIC DRAIN SERVICES, INC., and its owner and sole officer, KEVIN OTTO (D.O.B. 3/17/74) of Blackstone, are scheduled for trial in Suffolk Superior Court on Feb. 5, 2018, on indictments charging them each with two counts of manslaughter, one count of misleading an investigator under the state’s witness intimidation statute, and six counts of concealing a record under the evidence tampering statute. The Suffolk County Special Grand Jury returned the indictments Feb. 8 after an exhaustive probe by Suffolk prosecutors assisted by Boston Police homicide detectives and federal workplace safety investigators.

At arraignment today, Assistant District Attorney Lynn Feigenbaum of the DA’s Senior Trial Unit recommended $1,000 bail for Otto, who walked into court, as well as an order that he surrender his passport. Suffolk Superior Court Clerk Magistrate Lisa Medeiros released Otto on his own recognizance but ordered him to surrender his passport and check in with probation officers once a week.

Feigenbaum told the court that Atlantic Drain Services had been hired last year to install new water and sewer lines at 12 Dartmouth St.  On Oct. 21, after about five days of excavation, workers were inside the trench, which measured about five feet across by eight feet long by 12 feet deep, shoveling dirt and vacuuming it out, Feigenbaum said. Otto was present at the scene and maneuvering the vacuum truck.

“At no time during the excavation being done on Oct. 21, 2016, was any type of cave-in protection, either metal trench boxes or tongue-and-groove wooden planks, used in the trench,” Feigenbaum told the court.

At about 12:30, she said, Higgins and Mattocks were working in the trench when dirt began to slough off the sides, burying the men up to their waists. At about this time, a fire hydrant at the side of the trench fell into the hole and water began to pour in. The trench was flooded within seconds and neither Higgins nor Mattocks was able to escape. Both died at the scene, and it would be almost six hours before their bodies could be recovered.

Prosecutors allege that Otto and Atlantic Drain Services were well aware of the extreme danger posed by a deep trench without cave-in protection because they had been cited twice by OSHA for failing to utilize them – first in 2007, when they were fined $15,000, and again in 2012, when they were fined $40,000. As a result, Atlantic Drain Services agreed to provide comprehensive training programs so workers understood the hazards to which they could be exposed while excavating.

In the course of the death investigation arising out of the Dartmouth Street fatalities, the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Conley’s office served Atlantic Drain Services with subpoenas for certain records. In response, Atlantic Drain Services “submitted to OSHA various documents purporting to be sign-in sheets for excavating and trenching trainings, as well as documents regarding the receipt by workers of personal protective equipment,” Feigenbaum said. But the individuals whose signatures appear on those documents told investigators that they did not sign them and did not authorize anyone else to sign them on their behalf.

Otto and Atlantic Drain Services allegedly misled OSHA investigators by providing those doctored records pursuant to the first subpoena, then concealed the records from the Suffolk County Grand Jury by failing to provide them pursuant to the second subpoena, prosecutors said.

Atlantic Drain Services, Inc., was represented today by attorney Camille Sarrouf, Jr., and Otto by attorney Maki Antzoulatos. The case returns to court on March 30.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.