Plea deal reached in Islip illegal dumping trial

A plea deal has been reached in week six of the Islip illegal dumping trial. Thomas Datre Jr. on Wednesday pleaded guilty to four felony counts, admitting that he dumped construction material at four

News 12 Staff

Mar 31, 2016, 12:55 AM

Updated 3,212 days ago

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A plea deal has been reached in week six of the Islip illegal dumping trial.
Thomas Datre Jr. on Wednesday pleaded guilty to four felony counts, admitting that he dumped construction material at four sites in the Town of Islip. Those sites included Veterans Way in Hauppauge and Roberto Clemente Park in Brentwood.
Datre Jr. promised to clean up the sites and complete soccer fields at the park, under the supervision of the Department of Environmental Conservation.
Datre Jr. and his father Thomas Datre Sr. were accused of dumping thousands of tons of contaminated debris.
News 12 has learned Datre Jr. faces no more than 1 1/3 to four years behind bars. The sentencing has been deferred until the site is cleaned up. Counts against Thomas Datre Sr. were dismissed.
While the charges were personally dropped against Datre Sr. on the matter, he and his wife Clara did plead guilty on behalf of their coporation for not paying employees a "prevailing wage." As part of the deal, the two will avoid jail time but must pay between $80,000 and $90,000 to those employees.
As for Datre Jr. and the cleanup, the judge said "I'll be watching," and made it clear that Datre's behavior will affect his promised sentence.
Also under the agreement, another associate, Christopher Grabe, also pleaded guilty to dumping the materials.