FIRE VICS MAYBE SLAIN
Injuries suggest 2 men killed before blaze set as coverup: sources
Two men found dead in a Brooklyn apartment fire may have been murdered before the blaze broke out, police sources said Monday, with neighbors describing the home as a noisy party den.
The city medical examiner said it is not yet clear how the victims died. But sources said the fire at a four-story building on Bay 29th St. near Bath Ave. in Bath Beach may have been intentionally set around 6:45 p.m. Sunday to cover up a double murder.
One of the victims appeared to have head trauma, and the other may have been stabbed in the neck, sources said.
Neighbors described the tenant who lived in the apartment where the blaze broke out as a heavy drinker who threw loud, wild parties.
“He couldn’t even answer the door half the time, he was so drunk,” said James Pumilia, 76, who lives on the fourth floor. “Heavy, heavy drinker and other s—t. He used to have people over.”
Another neighbor agreed that the apartment was party central.
“I saw him drunk five days [a week], easy,” said the resident, who did not want to be identified. “He was nice but didn’t control himself. Many times he would let people into his apartment. It was all-the-time party.”
Two firefighters suffered minor injuries battling the blaze.
A neighbor running down the stairs to escape the building passed by an apartment and saw a man engulfed in flames.
“He had a blue shirt, there was full-on fire across his face,” Kervens Jasmin, 25, told the Daily News. “I’m not sure if the fire was in the air or if he himself was burning.”
Once inside the apartment, firefighters discovered the two dead men. Their names have not been released.
Frightened neighbors described the harrowing moments after the blaze broke out and smoke wafted through the building.
“We heard screaming, and the next thing when we opened the door, I saw smoke,” Pumilia said. “Thank God we heard them. We ran out of here because, God forbid, if it got any worse we would have died of smoke inhalation.”
Huma Asad, 40, who lives next to the apartment where the fire broke out, said she heard screaming and saw smoke seeping into her apartment.
“There was a lot of smoke,” she recounted. “My husband called the fire brigade. My children were scared. They didn’t sleep all night. This was a real nightmare for us.”
It took 60 FDNY members from 12 different units just over an hour to knock down the flames, officials said.