A disturbed Brooklyn man who has terrorized a Bushwick apartment building for months was behind an early-morning blaze that injured at least nine tenants Tuesday, sources and neighbors said.
The suspected arsonist even tried to block the front door of the building to keep tenants from getting to safety as flames engulfed the four-story walkup shortly before 3 a.m., witnesses told The Post.
“He’s crazy,” next door neighbor John Palma said. “All of our neighbors in that building have been complaining about the guy. Like he’s been here for about a year and they keep calling the police and the police come pick him up and then he just is brought back. It happened a bunch of times.”
Police said Tuesday that a man in his 60s — whose name is being withheld — was spotted setting the fire at 127 Evergreen Aven., but said there have been no arrests in the blaze.
Second-floor tenant Tisdale Charles said he caught the culprit red-handed — and got into a scuffle.
“I heard this like electrical popping noise and I came outside and he was doing something,” said Charles, 29. “I said, ‘You lighting a fire or something?’ ‘Cause I could smell something burning.
“And he rushed me,” he said. “I froze and [my cousin Natasha VanCartier] just hit him and dropped him. He ran inside to get a knife and when he came back out I grabbed a broom just to keep from getting stabbed, and I said, ‘Yo, chill!’”
Charles claimed the nut then ran inside and started smashing items in his apartment before returning.
“He was going nuts,” he said. “And then he had the door blocked from the inside, the front door of the building. He blocked it from the inside and he was banging and screaming, ‘Fire!’
VanCartier, 35, who shares the apartment with her cousin, said the alleged arsonist wasn’t finished.
“After we push the door open so people could get out he ran back in and got a board and started fanning the fire,” she said. “Yeah, he was trying to make the fire grow and was fanning the flames.”
VanCartier and Charles ended up being trapped by the flames when they ran upstairs to get their six dogs and had to be brought down by a fire department ladder, they both said.
Authorities said nine people were hurt in the blaze but not with life-threatening injuries.
Residents said the alleged firebug, who remains on the loose, was placed in the building through the Institute for Community Living a nonprofit contracted by the city to find housing and services for the needy.
A spokesperson for ICL confirmed Tuesday that it placed a tenant in the building but would not identify the client, It is not clear if it is the individual suspected of setting the fire.
“I can confirm that an ICL participant was placed in the building,” the spokesperson for the agency said in an email. “There have been no prior issues with this participant.”
They said the building is not involved with the city departments of Homeless Services or Social Services.
But residents at the building said the troubled tenant has been a constant source of complaints and concern due to bizarre and frightening behavior over the past few months.
“A lot of neitghbors have been calling about him,” Palma said. “Always issues with that guy.”
He described him as “a black male with mental issues.”
An NYPD spokesperson confirmed that there had been no arrests in the case.
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods and Haley Brown
