{"id":115659,"date":"2026-01-28T22:52:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T22:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115659\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T22:52:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T22:52:06","slug":"eastchester-high-rise-fire-man-charged-for-sparking-explosion-in-the-bronx-that-killed-1-injured-15-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/115659\/","title":{"rendered":"Eastchester high-rise fire: Man charged for sparking explosion in the Bronx that killed 1, injured 15 others"},"content":{"rendered":"

EASTCHESTER, Bronx (WABC) — Police arrested and charged a man on Wednesday, in connection to high-rise fire in the Bronx<\/a> that killed one person and injured more than a dozen others over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Detectives charged 33-year-old Samuel Calderon, who is homeless, with two counts of murder, manslaughter, assault, burglary, petit larceny, criminal contempt and harassment.<\/p>\n

They say Calderon dismantled a stove, which let out gas and sparked the fire at the Boston Secor Houses on Bivonia Street between Reeds Mill Lane and Boston Road in Eastchester after midnight on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Video in the media player above is from a previous report.<\/p>\n

The fire, which started on the 15th floor, killed 60-year-old resident Ronald McCallister, and injured 15 other people.<\/p>\n

The explosion occurred in the building about 15 minutes after emergency officials arrived on the scene.<\/p>\n

Several apartments became fully engulfed in flames.<\/p>\n

Residents were seen in the windows of the building and one man was even spotted dangling with his legs out of the building as he tried to escape the intense heat from the fire.<\/p>\n

Police say McCallister was not the suspect’s intended target.<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

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Copyright \u00a9 2026 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTCHESTER, Bronx (WABC) — Police arrested and charged a man on Wednesday, in connection to high-rise fire in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[51248,128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-115659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-51248","9":"tag-bronx","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-nyc","13":"tag-the-bronx","14":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","15":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}