A Bronx firebug has been charged with murder in the deadly blaze that killed three people — including the elderly owner of the building that his family called home for decades, according to cops and the victim’s loved ones.
Daniel Santana, 45, was charged with murder, arson and manslaughter in connection to the early May 6 fire that erupted in an apartment building with a ground-floor deli on Third Avenue near East 149th Street in Mott Haven, killing Oreste De Leon, 70, and two others, police said.
DeLeon used his last moments to help another building resident, only known as Chino, who was struck in a back bedroom – but he too didn’t make it out alive, tenant Sharon Horton told The New York Times.
The remains of a third victim – whose identity remains unknown – were removed from the wreckage later in the week.
Santana – who recently could be seen wandering the neighborhood in an apparently drunken state, blasting music – allegedly used a container of accelerant to douse the building, the paper reported.
But Santana’s motive for the deadly arson was not immediately known, nor whether he knew any of the victims.
He was ordered held without bail during his Wednesday arraignment, and will reappear in court on Friday, prosecutors said.
Meanwhile, neighbors told The Times that De Leon never judged the residents of the building, many of them drug users with nowhere else to go.
“We all looked at each like brothers and sisters, like family,” Mecca Daniels, 51, told the paper. “And Ori was our pop-pop.”
DeLeon’s great-niece Salina Rivera launched a GoFundMe page seeking financial support after the massive fire decimated “the building that had been in our family for OVER three generations.”
“Our family is left grieving the sudden loss of our family member. Losing him in such a tragic and violent way has left our family heartbroken and overwhelmed,” she wrote.
“This was not just a property — it was my grandmother’s childhood home, her late mother’s home, and a place filled with decades of memories, and history,” Rivera continued. “It also housed the deli she rented out, which used to be my great grandmother’s and was recently renovated.”
The conflagration drew more than 140 first responders to the scene, officials said.
Three firefighters suffered minor injuries.
After the fire, a full vacate order was issued on the crumbling building – more than a year after the FDNY ordered a structural inspection because of deteriorating steps leading to the second floor, and sloping ceilings with exposed wires, according to Department of Buildings records.
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