{"id":146090,"date":"2026-02-26T13:54:30","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T13:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/146090\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T13:54:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T13:54:30","slug":"man-indicted-for-murder-after-triggering-fatal-gas-explosion-while-dismantling-stove-in-bronx-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/146090\/","title":{"rendered":"Man indicted for murder after triggering fatal gas explosion while dismantling stove in Bronx, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man was indicted for murder after instigating a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/newyork\/news\/eastchester-bronx-apartment-fire-arrest-murder\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">gas leak resulting in an explosion<\/a> that killed a tenant at a Bronx apartment building, according to prosecutors.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Samuel Calderon, 55, was arraigned Wednesday on 17 charges, including murder, burglary and assault. Calderon, who police said is homeless, was trying to steal a stove from his ex-girlfriend&#8217;s home to sell for drugs in January, according to officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after midnight on Jan. 24, police said Calderon entered the woman&#8217;s apartment in the Boston Sector Houses. He allegedly dismantled a stove, which caused a gas leak.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He is seen on video surveillance wheeling the stove down the hall on a dolly, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n<p>The gas seeped to other floors and ignited in a 17th-floor apartment, causing an explosion. It collapsed the ceiling of the 16th-floor hallway, which fell on 60-year-old Ronald McCallister, killing him.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Eleven people were also injured, with one critically burned. All the residents in the building \u2013 over 300 people \u2013 were displaced by the fire.  <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This defendant allegedly entered his ex-girlfriend&#8217;s apartment to steal her stove, which he was planning to sell in exchange for drugs. His alleged disregard for the residents set in motion a chain of events that claimed the life of an innocent man, injured 11 others and has upended the lives of the residents,&#8221; said Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Calderon was arrested by police four days later when he returned to check the mailbox.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Neighbors also said the explosion triggered a gas outage in the building across the street, forcing them to cook with hot plates for days.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man was indicted for murder after instigating a gas leak resulting in an explosion that killed a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-146090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-the-bronx","13":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","14":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146090","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=146090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}