The five people in the house escaped uninjured but were left homeless.
Kyle Mahler, 18, of Farmingville, and Scott Soucek, 16, of Holtsville, pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment as a hate crime.
Mahler, Soucek and three others went by the house on July 5. Soucek said he ignited a bottle rocket and threw it through an open window.
``They actually watched the house burn,'' prosecutor Thomas Spota said. ``People could have been killed.''
The defendants are expected to get one to four years in prison. They could have faced up to 15 years if convicted of the more serious charges of arson.
Two other teenagers pleaded guilty last year. A fifth teenager was prosecuted as a juvenile.
The case raised racial tensions in Farmingville, a mostly white community of 15,800 where the median income is $68,000.
In 2000, two Mexican day laborers who lived next door to the house that was torched were lured to a warehouse with a promise of work, then beaten. Two men were convicted and are serving 25 years to life for attempted murder.
Related:
