{"id":258366,"date":"2026-04-08T23:11:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T23:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258366\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T23:11:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T23:11:12","slug":"ontario-warehouse-arson-suspect-posted-live-video-showing-fire-igniting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258366\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario warehouse arson suspect posted live video showing fire igniting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The suspect in a massive blaze at an Ontario warehouse<\/a> posted videos that appeared to show himself lighting the fire and griping about being paid low wages, according to video reviewed by The Times.<\/p>\n

Crews responded to the 1.2-million-square-foot Kimberly-Clark paper products facility early Tuesday morning and were quickly forced out due to \u201cextremely rapid fire growth,\u201d according to the Ontario Fire Department.<\/p>\n

The fire caused the building\u2019s roof to collapse and escalated to a six-alarm blaze, requiring the response of around 175 firefighters and evacuation of about 20 employees.<\/p>\n

Ontario Police Dept. Cpl. Emily Williams told KTLA that police are investigating the video. \u201cWe have had reports that he did give some information on social media,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, of Highland was arrested in connection with the blaze, according to authorities. Abdulkarim was employed by NFI Industries, a third-party distribution company for Kimberly-Clark products, fire officials said.<\/p>\n

On his Facebook page, Abdulkarim had shared several first-person videos in which a man \u2014 presumably Abdulkarim \u2014 is seen lighting fires in a warehouse. Alex Montero, who said he met Abdulkarim in the warehouse that night, obtained screen recordings of the videos by way of a mutual friend on Facebook.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, if you\u2019re not going to pay us enough… to afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this,\u201d the man says while lighting a roll of toilet paper on fire.<\/p>\n

In a subsequent video, the person filming continued to light fires as radios in the background relayed fire reports and evacuation instructions to employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll you had to do is pay us enough to live,\u201d the narrator says as the camera focused on several stacks of paper products beginning to catch fire. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere goes your inventory,\u201d he says in a final video as the flames began to spread out of control.<\/p>\n

The Ontario Police Department did not immediately respond to questions from The Times about the videos.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was him that posted himself doing it,\u201d Montero wrote in an email to The Times, referring to the videos. \u201cIf not I wouldn\u2019t have put it out there like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Times staff writers Clara Harter and Joseph Serna contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The suspect in a massive blaze at an Ontario warehouse posted videos that appeared to show himself lighting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,114088,114090,828,3564,89970,3802,114091,47503,48171,113747,114089,236,3729,1791,5050],"class_list":{"0":"post-258366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-chamel-abdulkarim","12":"tag-emily-williams","13":"tag-employee","14":"tag-evacuation","15":"tag-facebook-page","16":"tag-fire","17":"tag-kimberly-clark-product","18":"tag-live-video","19":"tag-massive-blaze","20":"tag-ontario-fire-department","21":"tag-ontario-warehouse-arson-suspect","22":"tag-police","23":"tag-report","24":"tag-times","25":"tag-video"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}