NEW YORK, June 1 (Xinhua) -- The Manhattan district attorney's office has opened a criminal investigation into a deadly crane accident Friday that killed two construction workers and seriously injured a third in the city's Upper East Side.

    Investigators want to know if the same crane was damaged during another project last year, and if so, who repaired it and allowed it back into service, the New York Times reported Sunday, quoting officials involved in the probe.

    The criminal probe came as the city was conducting its own investigation. City investigators have been focusing on a possible faulty weld in the turntable that connected the cab to the crane's tower.

    In Friday's accident, the crane's turntable broke, causing the top part of the crane, including the cab, boom and counterweight, to separate from the crane's steel tower and smash into an apartment building across the street before falling to the ground.

    The city's Department of Buildings (DOB) held an emergency closed-door meeting on Saturday with 79 representatives from the construction industry to discuss how to make work sites safer amid the city's real estate boom.

    A pedestrian was slightly hurt in Friday's deadly crash, the second to happen in the city in less than three months.

    In the previous crane accident that struck on March 15, seven people were killed and several buildings damaged in Manhattan's Turtle Bay.

    That accident led to the arrest of a crane inspector, who had given the crane the green light just days before it crashed to the ground, and the resignation of then DOB Commissioner Patricia Lancaster.

    Before the latest crane crash, 13 people had already died in construction-related accidents around New York City, one more than in all of 2007, the NY1 television station reported earlier.