A tenant of the Inwood apartment building where a raging fire killed three people, including a beloved fashion editor and her mother, has been arrested for homicide for sparking the inferno with a flicked cigarette, officials said Tuesday.
Victor Arias, 29, was nabbed Monday and hit with three counts of criminally negligent homicide for allegedly flicking a lit cigarette onto combustibles that sparked the May 4 blaze inside the building on Dyckman St. near Broadway, sources said.
Arias lives in the building, police said.
Those killed in Monday’s blaze included 48-year-old Yolaine Diaz, a former editor for People en Español, and her 73-year-old mother Ana Mirtha Lantigua. As they escaped the burning building, the two collapsed in the smoke-filled stairwell.
Diaz’s stepfather, who darted out onto the fire escape, survived and was seen by neighbors outside the building desperately searching for his wife and stepdaughter, heartbroken neighbors recalled.
The third victim who died was a man who lived on the fourth floor, neighbors said. His name has not been released.
Medics treated 14 people. Five were hospitalized with critical injuries, including tenant Alexis Rodriguez’s wife, 9-year-old son, and two daughters, ages 18 and 5. All four were intubated in the hospital for most of the week, Rodriguez said in a GoFundMe post asking for donations for medical expenses.
The landlord of 207 Dyckman St., Jack Bick, who heads JanJan Realty, is on the Public Advocate’s list of the city’s 100 worst landlords of 2025.
That six-story building has had 117 open violations, which include defective self-closing doors on the fourth and sixth floors and nonfunctioning smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors, city records show.
Bick and JanJan Realty have been sued by the city’s Housing Preservation and Development for not fixing violations in some of the buildings he is responsible for, city officials said.
Arias’ arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court was pending Tuesday.