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A New York City landlord is facing numerous charges after he allegedly burned down his own property when the tenants stopped paying rent.
The tenants moved into the second-floor Brooklyn apartment in May 2021 but stopped paying rent this past January after the government ended a program providing rent support.
Authorities said that the landlord, Rafiqul Islam, tried to get the family to leave, but they refused. He told them he was going to cut off their gas and electricity and, at one point, threatened to burn them out.
Islam allegedly made good on his threat on September 26, when he reportedly started a fire in the stairwell just after 5 a.m. There were eight people in the apartment at the time, including six kids. Luckily, everybody made it out of the apartment alive, though seven people were hospitalized with minor injuries.
Investigators spent weeks trying to track down the suspect and eventually linked Islam to the blaze. He was taken into custody and charged with eight counts of attempted murder, eight counts of assault, and one count of arson.