After deadly 2014 food-truck blast, U-Haul, ex-manager plead guilty to hazmat training violations

U-Haul Co. of Pennsylvania and the former general manager of its Feltonville operation pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to two counts each of violating hazardous-materials training regulations in a case that stemmed from a 2014 Feltonville food-truck explosion that killed a mother and daughter.

The company and Miguel Rivera, who was the general manager at U-Haul’s location at Hunting Park Avenue and Front Street, did not admit in their pleas to filling the propane tank attached to the La Parrillada Chapina food truck, which ruptured on July 1, 2014, killing Olga Galdamez, 42, and her daughter Jaylin Galdamez, 17, and injuring 11 others.

Instead, they pleaded guilty to two counts related to using at least two untrained workers to fill propane cylinders at the Hunting Park Avenue facility in June and July 2014.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Abrams told U.S. District Judge Robert Kelly that plea agreements called for U-Haul to pay a $1 million fine, the maximum amount for the two counts, and to be on probation for two years, and for Rivera to pay a $2,000 fine.

Kelly could accept or decline the agreed-upon penalties. He set sentencing hearings for Rivera on May 6 and for U-Haul the following day.

According to court documents, surveillance images showed that Olga Galdamez’s fiancé had repeatedly brought the large propane cylinders attached to the food truck to U-Haul’s Hunting Park Avenue location during June 2014. The government had alleged in five counts of a seven-count indictment that during that month, Rivera or other employees had filled the out-of-date cylinders brought by the fiancé with propane, violating hazardous-materials regulations. It alleged that Rivera on June 29, 2014, had filled the tank that later ruptured at the food truck, parked on Wyoming Avenue near Third Street.

But as part of the plea agreements, the government is expected to dismiss those five counts against U-Haul and Rivera during the sentencing hearings.

Abrams declined to comment on the case beyond what was said in court or in public filings.

Michael Engle, an attorney for Rivera, said after the hearing that the government has not established that Rivera was ever responsible for filling that tank. “He has always maintained that he did not fill an out-of-date container or the one that ruptured,” Engle said.

He said the training issues pleaded to in court had “no connection” to the ruptured tank that caused the deadly explosion.

Engle said that in addition to the fine, his client faces a guideline range of up to six months of either probation or jail time, and that he would seek probation.

Gerald Solarski, a corporate representative for U-Haul, entered the guilty pleas in court on behalf of the company.

Last year, U-Haul Co. of Pennsylvania agreed to pay a record $160 million in a civil settlement in the case — $36.47 million to the Galdamez estates; $69.17 million to a man who was a minor when he was severely injured in the explosion; and $54.35 million to a girl who was injured.