the ShopRite at 100 Greaves Lane in Evergreen Plaza on Nov. 26 <\/a>at about 3:44 p.m., while the store was open and crowded with holiday shoppers. <\/p>\nThe fire began spreading quickly through an aisle before a customer briefly attempted to knock it down with a store fire extinguisher, officials said.\u200b<\/p>\n
Investigators reviewing store surveillance video allegedly saw Sacchetti ignite merchandise on a shelf stocked with paper goods, according to the FDNY. <\/p>\n
No injuries to civilians or firefighters were reported, but fire officials estimate damage to the Great Kills supermarket will exceed $100,000. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile residents of Staten Island were beginning to prepare for Thanksgiving with their families, this individual put the lives of shoppers and responding firefighters at risk,\u201d FDNY Commissioner Robert S. Tucker said in a statement, praising the work of fire marshals who \u201capprehended a dangerous individual who put lives at risk.\u201d <\/p>\n
Richmond County District Attorney Michael McMahon also condemned the incident, saying Sacchetti is alleged to have needlessly endangered \u201ccountless Staten Islanders who were simply shopping for food for their families as well as essential ShopRite workers,\u201d and vowing to prosecute acts of arson that threaten residents \u201cto the fullest extent of the law.\u201d\u200b\u200b<\/p>\n
Bail was set at $50,000 cash, or $100,000 bond. Sacchetti\u2019s attorney, John Joseph Rapaway, declined to comment.\u200b Sacchetti is scheduled to return to court Friday. <\/p>\n
\u2018It was total chaos\u2019<\/p>\n
In the frenzied moments after the fire broke out, a ShopRite employee told the Advance\/SILive.com that store sprinklers activated as workers tried to douse the flames with an extinguisher but quickly had to stop when thick smoke made it impossible to see. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt literally couldn\u2019t have happened in a worse spot,\u201d the employee said, noting that flames rapidly consumed paper products in the aisle while managers ordered staff to abandon their efforts and evacuate the building. Dozens of employees later gathered in the shopping center parking lot until they were dismissed.<\/p>\n
The employee noted that the supermarket was \u201csuper busy,\u201d with some customers running with carts toward the registers before being told to leave their grocery hauls behind. Others stood at the end of the aisle where the fire started, recording video on their phones; some of those clips ended up circulating on social media. <\/p>\n
Outside, several customers arriving for last-minute Thanksgiving ingredients were stunned by the FDNY presence, as store security turned away shoppers who came to pick up holiday orders, including one woman who remarked, \u201cI\u2019m glad I picked up my turkey yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back to business<\/p>\n
When the Advance\/SILive.com visited the store on Friday, Nov. 28,<\/a> dozens of shoppers were already filling their carts less than 48 hours after the fire.<\/p>\nA faint smell of smoke lingered, and workers were restocking the paper goods aisle where the fire occurred. All other aisles and departments were fully stocked, with few visible signs that the incident had taken place just two days earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 A 21-year-old ShopRite worker is accused of igniting a fire that sent holiday shoppers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-60291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60291","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=60291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}