The Manhattan district attorney’s office has opened a criminal investigation into a fatal crane accident on the East Side, focusing on whether a part of the crane had been seriously damaged last year and then inappropriately put back into service, an official involved in the investigation said on Saturday. 

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Workers atop the tower of the crane on East 91st Street that collapsed on Friday.

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The piece in question is a rotating apparatus, or turntable, that connects the operator’s cab and the boom to the crane tower. The official said investigators believed but were not certain that the turntable involved in Friday’s accident, on East 91st Street, was damaged during construction on West 46th Street last year.

In both jobs, the cranes were owned by the New York Crane and Equipment Corporation. The owner of the company, James F. Lomma, did not return calls.

If the turntable in Friday’s accident is the same as the one damaged last year, the district attorney’s office will try to answer several questions, people involved in the investigation said. Those questions include: Did the Department of Buildings order New York Crane to dispose of the cracked turntable? If New York Crane was authorized to repair the turntable, was the work done correctly? And was the Buildings Department required to sign off on those repairs?

The division of the district attorney’s office handling the investigation, the Rackets Bureau, looks into all fatal construction accidents in the borough. But in some of those cases it quickly determines that there is no criminal liability.

“I wouldn’t say that here,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was in its earliest stages. “I think it’s an open question. If in fact that turntable was taken out of service and someone put it back in service improperly, that could lead to criminal liability.”

Barbara Thompson, the spokeswoman for the district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, confirmed that an investigation had begun but declined to discuss any details.

In May 2007, a worker discovered a crack in a metal plate that was part of the turntable of a crane at the construction site of the Platinum condominium, at Eighth Avenue and 46th Street, construction executives involved in the project said. The city halted work, and the turntable was replaced.

If the same turntable was in use on Friday, investigators will try to determine whether the repairs and reassembly were adequate.

Robert D. LiMandri, the acting buildings commissioner, said during a news conference on Saturday that it had not been determined whether it was the same turntable at the two construction sites. He said the turntable would be a focus of the investigation.

“A deep mechanical failure within the crane is something we need to get to the bottom of,” he said.

Asked whether the city had directed New York Crane to discard the turntable after the damage was detected last year, Mr. LiMandri said only that he knew there had been “discussion about a crane, a Kodiak crane” that had a problem.

The failure on East 91st Street appeared to be very different from the problem discovered last year on West 46th Street, however. The 91st Street accident did not involve a crack in the turntable, but instead appeared to have occurred when a weld joining two parts of the turntable broke, according to people familiar with the investigation. A person who examined the crane after Friday’s accident said that the faulty weld could have been made when the turntable was reassembled after being repaired.

After the turntable broke, the top part of the crane, including the cab, boom and counterweight, separated from the crane’s steel tower and smashed into an apartment building across the street before falling to the ground. Two workers were killed and one was injured.

The crane, a model known as a Kodiak, was manufactured in 1984.

Mr. LiMandri issued stop-work orders for Kodiak cranes that are now in use at four other sites in Manhattan until new inspections, additional testing and a review of maintenance records are completed. He also directed that no cranes be erected, dismantled or increased in height over the weekend.