Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has opened an investigation into whether the corporate landlord of an Inwood apartment building where multiple tenants died in a fatal May 4 fire is criminally liable for conditions that possibly played a role in the deadly conflagration, THE CITY has learned.
Days before the fire, city housing inspectors had cited the owner, Jack Bick and his firm Janjan Realty, for a number of code violations, including apartments with non-functioning self-closing entry doors.
Fire Department officials said open apartment doors at 207 Dyckman St. contributed to the spread of the fire that started in the lobby and quickly raced up the staircase to the top floor.
A total of four people have died from the fire. Three residents — including a journalist for People magazine and her mother — perished that day. Five others were hospitalized with critical injuries, and one of them died this week from her injuries.
DA Bragg last week charged a tenant in the building with criminally negligent homicide, alleging he caused the blaze by discarding a lit cigarette into cardboard boxes in the lobby and then went back to his apartment to sleep as fire spread throughout the building.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the DA confirmed that Bragg was also looking into potential criminal liability by the companies that own the building.
THE CITY has reported that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) has filed 16 lawsuits over violations in 10 buildings citywide — including the building next to the fatal fire — owned by Bick and a shareholder in Janjan, Chaim Schweid, and their affiliated real estate firms.
As of this week HPD inspectors had issued more than 1,300 code violations at those buildings, including over 400 deemed “immediately hazardous.”
The day after the fire, housing inspectors issued several more violations, including for blocked fire escapes and obstacles in the courtyard tenants escaped to via the fire escapes during the blaze.
The expanding investigation of the Dyckman Street fire is part of the Housing & Tenant Protection Unit set up by Bragg that focuses on long-term investigations into organized criminal activity among landlords and developers, including harassment of rent stabilized tenants.
A message left for Bick at Janjan’s listed number was not returned, and a lawyer for Janjan did not respond to THE CITY’s inquiry on Wednesday.
Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.
The post Manhattan DA Probe Targets Inwood Fatal Fire Landlord appeared first on THE CITY – NYC News.
