Syracuse, NY -- Police are seeking a man in connection with a fire that damaged one of 44 units at an east side apartment building early this morning. Help was summoned about 2:29 a.m. to the Commodore Apartments, 1505 E. Genesee St., E-911 records show. The fire damaged the kitchen of apartment 8 and appears to have started when someone...
Syracuse, NY -- Police are seeking a man in connection with a fire that damaged one of 44 units at an east side apartment building early this morning.
Help was summoned about 2:29 a.m. to the Commodore Apartments, 1505 E. Genesee St., E-911 records show.
The fire damaged the kitchen of apartment 8 and appears to have started when someone perched a mattress on the stove and turned burners on, said Lt. Ken Heffernan, a city fire investigator.
The apartment's tenants, a woman and child, were not home when the fire started. Police had been called to the apartment earlier and the occupants had been taken to another location, Heffernan said.
The man involved in the earlier episode is the person being sought in relation to the fire, Heffernan said. He declined to give a more elaborate description.
No one was hurt fighting the blaze and all of the tenants of the building's 36 other occupied apartments escaped unharmed, Heffernan said.
Building superintendent Roger Robinson said alarms alerted some tenants and that he pounded on doors to roust others.
None of the other apartments was affected and the rest of the building was habitable this morning, Robinson said.