Colleagues paint caustic portrait of artist colony founder
SAN FRANCISCO — The founder of a ramshackle Oakland artists’ colony where dozens of people burned to death saw himself as a kind of guru and loved to surround himself with followers but showed chilling disregard for their well-being, according to relatives, neighbors and acquaintances.
Derick Ion Almena, 46, leased and operated the cluttered warehouse where a blaze erupted Friday night during a dance party, leaving at least 36 people dead in the nation’s most lethal building fire in over a decade.