The city’s medical examiner ruled Friday that the deaths of four people, including a 3-year-old girl, in a Queens apartment fire were homicides.
The ruling comes just days after law enforcement sources told the Daily News that the March 16 fire, which erupted in a third-floor apartment in Flushing occupied by as many as a dozen squatters, is being investigated as a possible arson.
Also on Friday, the NYPD identified 50-year-old Chengri Cui and 3-year-old Sihan Yang as two of the four people killed in the fire. The identities of the remaining two victims, a 61-year-old woman and a 63-year-old man, are being withheld until their families are notified of their deaths.
The blaze broke out nearly two weeks ago on Avery Ave. near College Point Blvd. around 12:30 p.m., officials said.
The owner of a nearby gas station heard what he described as an explosion and looked across the street to see people leaping from the building.
“Something blew up,” Wadud Mohammad, 59, told the Daily News shortly after the fire. “The whole roof was on fire. People were jumping from the building. Others were running across the street.”
One of the men died at a local hospital while the other three victims died at the scene.
There have been no arrests as of Friday. The official cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
Four people were killed after a four-alarm fire broke out inside a residential building at 44-49 College Point Blvd. in Queens on March 16. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
A man who works near the scene said the building is poorly maintained and left unsecured.
“That building is chaos,” said the 30-year-old worker, who would only identify himself as Eric. “The door is always open, like anyone can just walk in. No one was taking care of that house.”
Department of Buildings records indicate that an inspection of the Avery Ave. address in 2020 revealed the owner improperly converted the two-family building into a seven-family building “by creating five additional single-room occupancies and nine additional bedrooms.”
Inspectors found the rooms “with key-locking devices, bed, TV, cooking equipment, refrigerators and food items in rooms,” city records show.
More than 230 firefighters and EMS members fought the fire and treated the injured. Five firefighters, including two who fell through a staircase, were hospitalized with minor injuries.
Seven surviving residents — three women and four men, ranging in age from 33 to 67 — were treated for burns, smoke inhalation and other minor injuries.