Owner of exploding building arrested at airport while trying to leave: Authorities

CLINTON TOWNSHIP, MI — The owner of a suburban Detroit business that caught fire and exploded, killing one man, was arrested at a New York airport as he prepared to leave for Hong Kong on a one-way ticket, authorities said Friday.

U.S. Customs and Port Authority personnel arrested 31-year-old Norwegian Noel Kestou at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Saturday. He was returned to Michigan on Wednesday.

Kestou, of Commerce Township, was charged Thursday with involuntary manslaughter.

The March 4 fire and explosion occurred at a Clinton Township building housing a vaping industry distributor called Goo. There were more than 100,000 vape pens stored on site. Authorities have said that a truckload of butane canisters arrived at the building within a week of the explosion, sending the canisters flying up to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) into the air, and that more than half of that supply was still there when the fire started.

Turner Lee Salter, 19, was about a quarter mile (0.40 kilometers) away when he was struck by a nitrous oxide canister propelled through the air by the explosion. Salter later died.

Authorities said they received information on April 20 that Kestou was trying to fly to Hong Kong.

“We don’t know what his ultimate goal was,” Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido told reporters Friday. ‘Was it to stay out of the country here with wife and child? No one has a crystal ball to determine who is a flight risk.”

“He was a suspect from the beginning because he was the owner of this company,” Lucido added. “Anyone who has a business and something like this happens should be considered a suspect.”

Goo had received a township use permit in September 2022 for the 2,480-square-foot building as a retail location for a “smoke shop/vape shop” that would sell vape product paraphernalia, Clinton Township’s Building Department has said.

Kestou was released after posting $500,000 bail. Lucido said authorities have his passport and that a condition of the bail is that Kestou must wear a GPS tether. A probable cause hearing is scheduled for May 7 in Clinton Township District Court.

Kestou’s attorney, James Thomas, said Thursday he had no comment on the case.