It was just after midnight on May 4 when a man entered an apartment building in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan. He sat down on a windowsill in the lobby and lit a cigarette. About six minutes later, according to a criminal complaint, he dropped the cigarette onto a pile of cardboard boxes.
Then, the complaint says, he walked away and climbed the stairs.
Less than 10 minutes later, surveillance footage showed white smoke rising from the boxes. By 12:38 a.m., flames had engulfed the entire lobby, according to the complaint.
The fire eventually overwhelmed the six-story building, killing three people, severely injuring several others and leaving dozens of people without a home.
On Tuesday, Victor Arias, 29, was arraigned on three counts of criminally negligent homicide in connection with the fire. Mr. Arias pleaded not guilty.
At his arraignment, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office said Mr. Arias had not intended to start the fire and should be given supervised release. A lifelong New York resident, Mr. Arias lived in the building with his mother and sisters, they said. He receives regular medical treatment that would be interrupted if he were sent to jail, according to prosecutors.
The judge approved Mr. Arias’s release, and asked that he surrender his passport and follow a curfew. Prosecutors had asked that Mr. Arias be kept from traveling outside New York and have a 9 p.m. curfew, among other restrictions.
In New York City, smoking is prohibited in common indoor areas — including hallways, stairwells and lobbies — of buildings with three or more residential units.
At a news conference after the fire, Lillian Bonsignore, the city’s fire commissioner, said the flames had been able to spread more quickly because fleeing residents had left their apartment doors open.
“I know it’s a scary situation in a fire,” she said. “We’re not always thinking straight. But close the door. Make sure all your family members know to do the same.”
A spate of deadly fires in the Bronx in the past few weeks has led to renewed warnings from the Fire Department urging people to close doors as they exit to help keep flames and smoke from spreading.
As of Tuesday, seven people injured in the Inwood fire were still hospitalized, officials said.
Investigators have identified the three people killed as Lance Garcia, 25; Yolaine Bienvenida Díaz Dominguez, 48; and Ana Dominguez Lantigua, 73.
Ms. Díaz Dominguez covered fashion for People en Español, the online Spanish-language arm of the magazine, until 2023, and continued to contribute regularly after that, according to a statement by Meredith Worsham, the chief communications officer for People. Her work was published as recently as April 26.
Ms. Díaz Dominguez was the daughter of Ms. Lantigua. The two women were found dead after they tried to escape down a stairwell but encountered smoke, the publication said. Ms. Díaz Dominguez’s stepfather survived, leaving the building via a fire escape.
Alexis Rodriguez, whose wife and three children were critically injured in the fire, wrote on a fund-raising page that his wife, Rosa, and son, Alonzo, 5, were breathing on their own.
His daughters, Alexa, 18, and Alison, 5, remain intubated, he wrote. The fund-raiser had received more than $50,000 by Tuesday. A separate fund-raiser for another family displaced by the fire had raised almost $4,000.
The building in Upper Manhattan, at 207 Dyckman Street, had over 100 documented safety violations as of May 4, and had been put into a special city program to correct the issues. Some of the problems could be tied to fire safety, like faulty self-closing doors, which are designed to keep smoke and fire from spreading. It was unclear if they played a role in the fire.
Earlier this month, the housing department said in an email that 85 violations had recently been resolved.
The city sued the building’s landlord, SB Dyckman LLC, last month over conditions in the building next door, which it also owns. In the suit, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development accused the landlord of waging an intentional and aggressive campaign to harass and displace rent-stabilized tenants.
The fire at 207 Dyckman Street spread from the cardboard boxes in the lobby to the walls and ceiling of the ground floor, and then up the stairway to the upper floors of the building, a fire marshal’s investigation found.
Around 1:30 a.m., the marshal said, he saw three people near the roof landing who were “burned throughout the entirety of their bodies,” according to the criminal complaint.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
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