NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s fire commissioner says it appears arson caused a weekend blaze that killed five people in Brooklyn.
Commissioner Salvatore Cassano told reporters: “It’s very likely that this was an incendiary fire.”
Tests for accelerants were incomplete. But Cassano says accidental fires don’t usually start at the front door of a building.
Four men and a woman, all Guatemalan immigrants, perished on Saturday. The woman’s 2-month-old daughter suffered a fractured skull. The baby’s father tossed her from a third-floor window of the burning building.
The fire was the city’s deadliest since 2007. That blaze killed 10 people, nine of them children, in the Bronx.
