A deranged Mexican immigrant set a Queens fire that killed four strangers — including a 3-year-old girl — because he wanted “someone” to pay after he got booted from his job, prosecutors said Thursday.
Roman Amatitla, 38, chose the Flushing building at random after losing his food processing job on March 16, then bought beer, bummed matches from a local gas station and lit a fire in the first-floor hallway — then stood outside sipping the beer while he watched innocent victims die one-by-one, prosecutors said.
“He indicated that he watched as people jumped from various windows, some of them living, one of them dying,” Queens Assistant District Attorney Gabriel Reale said in court as Amatitla was arraigned on murder, arson and assault charges in the horrific blaze.
“He watched as the mother of the 3-year-old victim died from the third floor of smoke inhalation. He watched as that mother came back and screamed,” Reale told the judge. “He said he had to get his rage out on someone or something.”
He said Amatitla chose a building “where he knew no one.”
“He would eventually changed their lives forever,” Reale said.
According to a criminal complaint, Amatitla was seen on surveillance video casing out the College Point Boulevard building shortly after noon, then went across the street to a BP gas station.
He stuck one beer in his backpack, placed a second on the counter and asked for a lighter — but settled for a book of matches when he was told he’d have to pay for the lighter, the complaint said.
Amatitla allegedly then lit a piece of paper on fire in the vestibule at the bottom of the first-floor stairway, adding rubbish to the flames — even after seeing a woman walk inside and hearing the voices of others in the building, according to prosecutors.
The maniac then went outside and stood on the corner as the building was engulfed in flame.
It took city firefighters two hours to bring the blaze under control.
The fire killed four innocent people, including 3-year-old Sihan Yang and 50-year-old Chengri Cui, along with 61- and 63-year-old building occupants who have not been identified, police said.
Amatitla was arrested in his Queens home Tuesday by a US Marshals task force.
Queens DA Melinda Katz called the blaze “one of the greatest crimes this borough has seen in a very long time,” and said the details were “quite disturbing.”
Katz told reporters that one victim died from multiple fracturs after jumping from a window “because it was so traumatic and painful that he jumped.”
Judge Thomas Wright-Fernandez arraigned Amatitla Thursday on four counts of intentional murder, four counts of depraved indifference murder, two counts of second-degree assault, and one count each of first-degree arson, first degree assault, second-degree arson, second-degree assault and petty larceny.
He was ordered held without bail pending a return court date on Monday.
Queens prosecutors said Amatitla is an immigrant from Mexico, but said they did not know if he is in the US illegally.
