The owner of a Michigan business that exploded in March has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after a flying canister from the blast hit and killed a 19-year-old standing outside a quarter-mile away.
Noor Kestou, the owner of Select Distributors, was arrested this week at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York after police in Michigan were alerted that he was attempting to leave the country on a one-way ticket to Hong Kong, officials said.
“We don’t know what his ultimate goal was," Macomb County prosecutor Peter Lucido said. "Was it to stay out of the country with a wife and a child here?”
Kestou’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The warehouse that exploded March 4 in Clinton Township, just outstide Detroit, was a distributor for vape pens and smoke shop items and filled with illegally stored butane and nitrous oxide canisters, officials have said.
Investigators have not determined the cause of the fire, which spewed debris up to a mile away and took more than 24 hours to put out. The investigation, which is being led by the ATF, is ongoing, and the local fire chief says officials “cannot exclude human involvement in this fire at this time.”
Clinton Township Police said Kestou had been cooperative during the investigation. Officials did not move to press charges until they found out his passport was scanned on April 20. Detectives met with the prosecutors and quickly authorized a warrant for his arrest that day.
Kestou was escorted back to Michigan by police on Wednesday and pleaded not guilty at an arraignment hearing Thursday. He is out of jail on a $500,000 cash bond. The conditions of his release include being on a tether, surrendering his passport, no weapons, and he cannot leave the state.
If convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Kestou faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.
Turner Lee Salter, 19, was at a nearby car wash the day of the blast and was killed as canisters rained on the community, officials said.
The local fire department spent more than a week monitoring and extinguishing the sporadic explosions, pop-up fires and smoke at the warehouse.
“That ball of fire, the intensity of this fire, essentially damaged a lot of what they would normally look to try to conclude or what’s going to happen on the scene,” Clinton Township Fire Chief Tim Duncan said.
The EPA has started clean-up, putting more than 3,100 canisters of nitrous in secured containers that have strict requirements for transportation.
