Flames ripped through a unit in a four-story building in Brooklyn, leaving the neighborhood surrounded in smoke. Inside the second floor apartment, detectives said two men were found with injuries that point to a homicide. NBC New York’s Gaby Acevedo reports.
An investigation is underway after two bodies were pulled from an apartment following a raging fire in Brooklyn, and police sources said the men were killed before the blaze even broke out.
Firefighters were called to the scene on Bay 29th Street, between Bath and Benson avenues in Bath Beach shortly before 7 p.m. Sunday. Cellphone video captured screaming as flames whipped between the windows.
Some residents say they saw people trapped in a second-floor apartment and tried to help them, but the flames were too much. Crews got the fire under control within minutes, the FDNY said, then made the gruesome discovery.
One of the men had a stab wound to his neck, while the other had suffered some sort of head injury. A neighbor who has lived in the building for more than 20 years said he knew a man who lived in the second-floor apartment, saying he was Russian and in his 50s.
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The medical examiner will determine the identities of the two victims, as well as what killed them.
The fire, which investigators believe may have been intentionally set, caused the ceiling to cave in on an electronic store below it, causing $10,000 in damage, according to the owner of the shop. The cause is under investigation. No other injuries were reported.
The investigation is ongoing.
