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by SAM DOLNICK
A 28-year-old Brooklyn man who police said had a score to settle with a tenant, was arrested yesterday and charged with murder and arson in connection with the East Flatbush apartment house fire that killed five people and burned a Staten Island firefighter.
Among the 12 people injured in the early morning blaze on Saturday was firefighter Mark H. Conoway of Mariners Harbor. He suffered first-degree burns to the head an neck in a bid to save a 74-year-old man who was killed.
Conoway, of Brooklyn's Ladder 113, hopes to be released later this week from Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze. He was listed in fair condition
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced that Rodney Williams admitted buying a 99-cent bottle of rubbing alcohol and using it to soak advertising circulars in the building's lobby and setting them on fire. He was arrested by detectives at his residence at 189 E. 34 St. in Prospect Park South.
Three adults and a child -- members of a family of immigrants from Guinea -- died in an apartment on the top floor of the three-story building at 922 New York Avenue.
Another man, the person Conoway was trying to reach, died in a second floor apartment. The victim was said to have been too frail to flee after a recent stroke.
Conoway was burned when the fire suddenly flashed while he was climbing through a window to rescue James Gardner, who was trapped in a bedroom.
It took nearly two hours until the more than 100 firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze, which was set in a first-floor hallway. Besides Conoway, two firefighters, who sustained minor injuries, were hurt while fighting the blaze.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited Conoway, a 17-year FDNY veteran, early yesterday, to express his concern.
"He came by to say, 'Thank you, you did good work and I wish you well,'" said Conoway. "It wasn't a big photo-op. It was really nice."
Conoway had been due today to see his two girls, 3- and 6-years-old, who spend half their time with their mother, his former wife.
"I was supposed to see them tomorrow," he said yesterday, "but I'll put that off until mid-week."
"I told the girls I got a little boo-boo at work, but I'm OK," Conoway said. "I'm going to be all right."
"It was a terrible event brought about by some form of passion," Kelly said of the fire at a news conference. "There was this intent on Mr. Williams' part, we believe, to settle a score, send a message to an individual in the building."
The man Williams was targeting lived in the building's basement apartment and survived, police said. Williams' relationships to the targeted tenant and the woman, who did not live in the building, were not immediately known.
As flames shot through the building, Williams returned and helped several people out of windows on the second floor, Kelly said. Twelve people, including three firefighters, were injured.
Williams was to be arraigned by early today on counts of murder, depraved indifference, arson and reckless endangerment, the Brooklyn district attorney's office said. It was not immediately known whether he had a lawyer.
(ASSOCIATED PRESS material was used in this report.)
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