The family of a former Penn Hills man killed in a natural gas explosion in Youngstown, Ohio, last month is suing the property owners and the energy company for wrongful death.

Akil Drake, 27, was killed May 28 in Realty Tower at Federal Plaza in Youngstown at the JPMorgan Chase branch where he worked as a relationship banker.

The explosion, the lawsuit said, was caused by a natural gas supply line that was cut during work on it.

Drake had recently received a promotion to relationship banker and gotten engaged.

His death hit home for some in the Pittsburgh area, too. Drake graduated from Penn Hills High School in 2015 and occasionally returned to visit friends, family and mentors.

The explosion is still being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, which said on May 31 that a crew working on the line did not know it was pressurized when they cut into it.

The lawsuit was filed by Drake’s sister, Traesha Danyiel Pritchard of Charlotte, N.C., and his mother, Sharnette Crete-Evans of Penn Hills.

Drake’s family is represented by attorney Ben Whitman of Clark Fountain, a personal injury law firm based in Florida, as well as West Virginia lawyer Patrick McFarland.

Whitman said the case centers on the events that led an unsupervised, short-staffed crew to cut through a basement gas line they believed to be out of service.

“Right now, we don’t know whether it was a failure to verify whether it was safe to do it or not or maybe they had the information and maybe they didn’t open the file,” Whitman said. “We just don’t know.”

The defendants named in the suit include YO Properties, which owns Realty Tower; LY Property Management; Greenheart Companies, which was hired to relocate the building’s utilities in the basement; Enbridge Gas Ohio; and Dominion Energy.

In a statement, Enbridge said: “We express our deepest sympathy to the family of Akil Drake. Enbridge Gas Ohio does not comment on ongoing litigation.”

LY Property Management also said they could not comment.

“We are extremely saddened by the loss of Akil Drake,” they said in a statement. “Our sincere condolences go out to Akil’s family, those who loved him and all others impacted by this tragedy.”

The complaint, filed in Mahoning County, Ohio, includes multiple claims for negligence.

According to the complaint, the City of Youngstown hired contractors to replace sidewalks in the area of the 13-story Realty Tower, and work included clearing out old piping and other infrastructure.

The utility lines, the complaint said, were to be moved from under the sidewalk to the basement of the building, which housed apartments on the upper floors.

The city Board of Control paid Greenheart $140,000 for the work, the lawsuit said.

At the time of the explosion, Greenheart had only four people of the six-person crew present, and the supervisor was not on-site, the complaint said.

“On or about the time of the subject explosion, no one on the crew who were present were aware that one of the pipes and/or service lines defendant Greenheart’s crew was working on was pressurized and/or failed to consider the information they had been provided regarding the fact that the service lines were pressurized,” the lawsuit said.

The complaint alleges that the crew made three cuts into piping running along the basement wall when they realized they caused a release of natural gas.

The crew evacuated the basement and pulled the fire alarm, but within six minutes, the lawsuit said, the line exploded, causing significant structural damage to the building and trapping Drake.

The blast collapsed the first floor, where the bank branch was located, into the basement.

Seven others were injured.

It’s unclear how liable the utility companies are, according to attorney Julie Littky-Rubin of the Clark Fountain firm, but the natural gas lines changed hands from Dominion to Enbridge before the explosion.

That could have created some information gaps as the City of Youngstown hired Greenheart to undertake a sidewalk replacement project, which included removing old piping under Realty Tower, according to Littky-Rubin.

Most important, she said, is getting answers for Drake’s family.

“They are mourning the loss of a wonderful son, a wonderful brother, a wonderful community member, and they hope that through this process no other family will have to go through what they’re going through.”

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