Police are taking a closer look at a deadly Bronx fire after video surfaced appearing to show a man playing with fire inside the building hours before flames broke out.<\/p>\n
The fire happened Wednesday morning at 1484 Montgomery Ave. in Morris Heights.<\/p>\n
Video obtained by News 12 shows a man appearing to play with fire in the building\u2019s hallway around 2 a.m. \u2014 nearly six hours before the blaze broke out.<\/p>\n
A neighbor told News 12 the man had been lighting things on fire in the building for weeks.<\/p>\n
Authorities have not confirmed whether the fire was intentionally set, but investigators are treating the scene as a crime scene.<\/p>\n
The FDNY arrived around 7:45 a.m. and encountered heavy flames that quickly spread to several apartments.<\/p>\n
Seven residents and four firefighters were injured. One person died.<\/p>\n
Neighbors said the man seen in the video jumped from a fourth-floor window. Police said the 31-year-old man is in critical but stable condition.<\/p>\n
The American Red Cross has registered 24 households for emergency assistance, including 41 adults and 26 children \u2014 67 people total.<\/p>\n
Residents said they had raised concerns about conditions inside the building before Wednesday\u2019s fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll my worldly possessions are gone. I\u2019m glad that me, my children are safe. But\u2026 we live in fear, constantly living in fear,\u201d one resident said.<\/p>\n
Council Member Pierina Sanchez also spoke with residents who were still recovering from a fire at the same building in August.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been a doubling of fires in the Bronx over the last three years,\u201d Sanchez said. \u201cSomething is going on here.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the city\u2019s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the building has 151 open violations.<\/p>\n
The Department of Buildings said inspectors are checking the building to determine whether the fire doors were functioning properly.<\/p>\n
News 12 reached out to building management for comment and was waiting to hear back.<\/p>\n
The investigation into the cause of the fire remains ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police are taking a closer look at a deadly Bronx fire after video surfaced appearing to show a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-355405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355405","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=355405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}