Atty: Concrete lab chief tried suicide, hospitalized as NYC sentencing loomed

Atty: Concrete lab chief tried suicide

NEW YORK — A concrete-testing company chief tried to kill himself on the eve of his sentencing on a racketeering conviction — his second suicide attempt during a case that involves some of the city’s most prominent building projects, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Testwell Laboratories Inc. President V. Reddy Kancharla was sedated in a hospital, his lawyer said as a company vice president was sentenced Wednesday to 63 months to 16 years in prison.

With Kancharla’s condition uncertain, he now has until April 28 to prepare for a sentencing sure to send him to prison. His conviction carries a mandatory term of at least a year.

Meanwhile, Vice President Vincent Barone remained free on bail while he appeals his racketeering conviction in the case, which raised questions about concrete and steel strength test results on nearly 120 projects that include ground zero’s centerpiece tower and the new Yankee Stadium.

Barone, 43, declined to comment. He showed no emotion as Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin pronounced the sentence, saying the case “not only presents a near-decade-long pattern of deceit and collusion but a hazard to the safety of visitors and passers-by” and construction workers.

So far, at least 32 Testwell-tested projects have been reevaluated and pronounced safe. They include the stadium and ground zero’s Freedom Tower.

The judge and prosecutors said the company’s cheating could nonetheless have put people at risk, and the findings of safety so far didn’t excuse cutting corners.

“The message needs to be sent that integrity matters,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Diana Florence said.

Testwell and the executives were convicted of systematically fudging strength test results for concrete and steel. The lab’s fraud ranged from altering results on concrete samples from construction sites to inventing results for steel inspections that weren’t conducted, prosecutors said.

The fallout cost money — the city alone has spent about $1.2 million on retesting and related costs, Department of Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn said — and undermined trust in a testing mechanism set up to insure building safety.

As an independent lab, Testwell “played a critical role in our construction oversight system,” Yankees President Randy Levine wrote in a March 31 letter to the court. “Nothing could have been more important to us.”

Defense lawyers said the company and executives didn’t aim to deceive anyone. The charges reflected unintended errors, contract disputes and common industry practices, they said.

Kancharla’s lawyer has said he plans to appeal. But “At this time, I’m not thinking about the case, but about Reddy Kancharla and his family, for whom this has become a dark nightmare,” his lawyer, Paul Shechtman, said outside court Wednesday.

He said Kancharla tried to take his life Tuesday in his Ossining, N.Y., office — where Kancharla also was found Feb. 19 after slashing his wrist and taking sleeping pills, according to his lawyers.

At the time, Kancharla had been convicted of some charges, but jurors were still deliberating the most serious charge against him: enterprise corruption, New York’s version of racketeering. He was convicted of it days later.

Shechtman declined to say how Kancharla, 46, injured himself Tuesday.

The company, also convicted of enterprise corruption and other charges, is likely to face financial penalties. The amount hasn’t been determined.

The case spurred the city to start new spot checks and issue dozens of violation notices concerning concrete testing at construction sites.