Staff file photo / Ed Runyan Firefighters and other first responders tended to the injured along East Federal Street in downtown Youngstown on May 28, 2024, just after the Realty Tower exploded.

YOUNGSTOWN — A hearing is set for 1:30 p.m. May 12 for Mahoning County Probate Court Judge Robert Rusu Jr. to hear arguments for why he should or should not seal the records relating to the settlement reached between the relatives of Akil M. Drake and the defendants in the civil suit related to Drake’s death in the May 28, 2024, Realty Tower explosion.

Attorney Patrick McFarland of Parkersburg, W.Va., filed an April 11 motion on behalf of Drake’s relatives, including his mother, asking for the details of the settlement to be sealed from public view.

The motion asks that Rusu seal the “Summary of Proposed Settlement and Costs” and “each (of) the four proposed release of claims.”

The filing states that the “incident which gives rise to the death of (Drake) involves continued litigation involving multiple lawsuits and hundreds of claimants.”

The filing adds that “as part of the respective proposed settlements with (Drake’s family), the settling defendants included specifications that the amounts and terms of the respective settlements be confidential.” It adds that the Drake family “brings this motion to comply with those settlement terms.”

The settlement was announced in March from a suit filed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, though court records related to the case still do not mention a settlement. Attorney Ben Whitman, one of the attorneys for the family, released information in March indicating that a settlement had been reached, but he did not discuss the terms of the settlement.

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy appointed Judge W. Wyatt McKay, a retired Trumbull County Common Pleas Court judge, to preside over the apparently resolved lawsuit.

He is also assigned to handle other lawsuits filed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court related to the explosion. He is assigned only to handle the cases from Feb. 7, 2025, through May 7, 2025, according to Kennedy’s judgment entry.

McKay scheduled the next pretrial hearing in pending civil cases related to the explosion at 2:30 p.m. Aug. 8.

In addition to Drake being killed, several others were injured in the 2:46 p.m. explosion, which resulted in the building being demolished. Drake was a JP Morgan Chase Bank employee who was at work in the bank branch at the time of the explosion.

Court filings list seven other cases filed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court in addition to the Drake lawsuit.

The National Transportation Safety Board preliminarily found that a natural gas line in the basement of the Realty Tower that had been cut was the reason for the explosion.

NTSB officials said in late May of 2024 that the board does not investigate every natural gas explosion, but this one brought up issues they were especially concerned about, namely, third-party vendors potentially causing gas explosions and why a not-in-service gas line had pressurized natural gas in it.

Tom Chapman, a member of the NTSB board, said the natural gas provider to the area, Enbridge, and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, went into the basement after the explosion and found the cut service line, which was inactive but still pressurized.

The Drake lawsuit alleged that four crew members working in the basement made two cuts into piping along the basement wall of the Realty building, then realized after the third cut that it had released natural gas into the air.

The suit stated that the crew “evacuated the basement, then pulled the fire alarm” and that the building exploded about six minutes from the time the gas line was cut, causing “a devastating and wide-spanning explosion.” The suit stated that the explosion resulted in Drake “being injured and trapped and unable to escape the Realty Tower.”