A 76-year-old man and 77-year-old woman were found dead after a house fire in Queens. Photo / Dakota Santiago, The New York Times
A 76-year-old man and 77-year-old woman were found dead after a house fire in Queens. Photo / Dakota Santiago, The New York Times
A 76-year-old man and 77-year-old woman were discovered dead inside a Queens borough home in New York yesterday after a man entered the house and set it ablaze, according to police.
Emergency medical workers pronounced the man and woman dead at the home, a compact two-storey house in Bellerose,Queens, where they had lived for decades, according to their neighbours. Authorities have not released the victims’ names.
No arrests have been made, but today police said they were searching for a man aged 30 to 40 in connection with the killing.
The man, who has not yet been identified, entered the home and set it on fire while the pair was inside, according to preliminary information from police.
The man came to the house at around 10am, entering through the back after the older man opened the door, according to an internal police document obtained by the New York Times.
Inside the house, officers discovered the woman lying unconscious on the first floor. In the basement, they found the man chained to a wall with signs of trauma on his body, according to the police and the internal document.
The victims were discovered with signs of trauma; the fire's cause is under investigation. Photo / Dakota Santiago, The New York Times
Many circumstances of the deaths remained murky today, including the events that preceded the fire.
It did not initially appear that the man and the victims knew one another, police said.
The city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner will determine the pair’s exact cause of death, and the Fire Department is investigating the cause of the fire, authorities said.
The killings sent a wave of horror through the tree-lined Queens neighbourhood, where people remembered the couple as quiet and friendly.
Sarah Roslonowski, 27, whose house faces the couple’s home, said the pair had always been benevolent figures when she was growing up, keeping an eye on her and other children when they played soccer and football in the street.
She recalled a recent day in May when she had found an injured baby bird nearby and had knocked on the couple’s door to ask whether the hatchling had fallen from a nest on their property.
“They went into the backyard to check for a nest,” she said. Although they didn’t find one, Roslonowski said, “they were really kind about it”.
Today, a police officer stood watch outside the remains of the burned-out home with crime-scene tape encircling the lot.
The house, which is tucked on a residential street near the border of Nassau County, was badly charred, with buckled siding exposed on one side.
Outside on the lawn, the grass was dotted with household debris, fragments of window frames and a singed armchair.
Police are searching for a man aged 30 to 40 in connection with the incident. Photo / Dakota Santiago, The New York Times
A pair of votive candles and a small bouquet of flowers lay beside a street sign on the curb nearby.
Jamar Williams, who lives a few doors down, said he had been coming home from a doctor’s appointment when the babysitter watching his child called to say that a nearby house was on fire.
When he learned later that police believed the fire had been deliberately set, he could hardly believe it.
“This is some true-crime horror story type of stuff,” Williams said.
