The big-hearted Queens family who opened their doors to an unstable firebug asked the arsonist to get out of their home shortly before he torched the house, killing himself and two others, heartbroken relatives said Thursday.
“They nicely asked him to leave and he came back and set the fire,” a relative of the devastated family said of Daniel Abreu-Nunez, who authorities said lit the fatal blaze inside the 93rd St. home in East Elmhurst on Wednesday afternoon.
FDNY officials confirmed Thursday that the fire was intentionally set. “An ignitable liquid was used as an accelerant,” the department said on Twitter.
A source with knowledge of the case said Abreu-Nunez started the fire after he poured gasoline on the stove in the kitchen. The blaze was put out within an hour.
The flames tore through the home, killing the firebug, as well as 76-year-old Claudio Rodriguez and his 6-year-old granddaughter Emma Dominguez.
Emma’s mom, Elizabeth Rodriguez, 35, and her 10-month-old brother, Liam Dominguez, remained in critical condition at the Cornell Burn Center in Manhattan. Rodriguez has burns to 90% of her body, relatives said. Her surviving child has burns to about 80% of his body.
Rodriguez and her father took Abreu-Nunez in earlier in the week, relatives said. Abreu-Nunez, a family friend, came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic on Monday.
Relatives said Abreu-Nunez had legal troubles and nowhere else to go, but the family quickly realized that he was unstable.
“(Rodriguez) opened the doors to help someone and that piece of s--t, when they asked him to leave, set the house on fire and set everybody in the house on fire," one cousin, who would only identify himself as Gabriel, said as family members returned to the torched home Thursday to pick up some belongings. “She tries to help someone and that’s what she gets repaid with.
“The family is going through a tough time right now,” Gabriel said.
“It’s like a movie,” Elizabeth Rodriguez’s shell-shocked sister Claudia, who had just arrived from the Dominican Republic, told reporters before she broke down in tears and was ushered to a waiting car.
“They’re a beautiful family, a helpful family," Gabriel said about his cousins. "They open their doors (and) reach out. Ask anybody, they always help out.”
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