HARROWING TALE OF SURVIVING PYRO:
Tells of fleeing Bx. pyro murderer
A BRONX MAN who had to jump out of a two-story window to escape a deadly fire over the weekend called the man who started the blaze a “monster.”
Abakar Assad, 50, called Mara LaMinn, 44, an “animal, not a person” for pouring lighter fluid on his ex-girlfriend Berta Booker, 49, and setting her alight in a Belmont apartment Saturday afternoon.
Booker and LaMinn both died in the ensuing fire.
“I feel so bad. Trust me, it’s stressful,” Assad told the Daily News Monday.
“Depression. It goes through my mind. I can’t believe. I can’t sleep. I really need help.”
He said the fire left him with no place to live and no cash — and took away a good friend.
Assad recalled hearing LaMinn banging on the door of the apartment at about 1 p.m.
Booker reluctantly let in LaMinn while Assad said he peeked out of his bedroom window to see what was going on, he said. Within minutes, Assad recounted, the ex-lovers got into a violent argument.
Assad said he saw LaMinn attack Booker — and then flames erupted.
“He jumped on her,” Assad said. “I saw the fire and jumped out the window.”
Assad fell about 20 feet to the ground.
“I broke my feet,” he said. “I jumped from the second floor. It’s not easy.”
He could hear Booker’s cries and screams as the flames engulfed her.
He called 911 and dragged himself to a neighbor’s staircase.
Police sources suggested that Assad was romantically involved with Booker, but he said that was not the case. They were just roommates, he said.
LaMinn and Booker both died at St. Barnabas Hospital.
It is not clear whether LaMinn intentionally set himself on fire or simply couldn’t escape the fast-moving blaze.
Assad said Booker broke it off with LaMinn on Thursday.
“I don’t want you, you’ve done too much damage to me,” Assad quoted her as telling him. “She said, ‘Give me my key.’ He gave her the key — he took his stuff and he left.”
Assad broke into tears, as he described what Booker told her killer.
“‘You’re too much,’ she told him. ‘I try to help you, but you won’t help yourself.’ I don’t know how he did that, why he killed this woman,” he said.
Assad said their relationship was toxic.
“He’s not good. He’s not a good person,” he said. “She has a daughter who lives in Spain. She told me, ‘I don’t like this guy . . . there’s always drama.’ He’s aggressive. He’s very, very jealous.”
Booker left behind two adult children, a 26-year-old son and a 20-year-old daughter, her sisterin-law said. She would regularly send money back to family members in the Dominican Republic, where she was born.
LaMinn once boasted of setting another girlfriend on fire, according to his current roommate, who asked that his name not be used.“He was gonna take the lighter fluid and set her on fire,” the roommate said. “I think he tried it and she left and she never came back.”