Suspect Arrested In 7-Alarm Fire At Kings Plaza Parking Garage Says 'Sorry'

Sept. 18, 2018, 10:51 a.m.

As many as 130 Mercedes Benz vehicles may have been destroyed.

Courtesy @nuffsaidny

Courtesy <a href="https://twitter.com/nuffsaidny" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@nuffsaidny</a>

After 250 firefighters responded to a huge fire that broke out in the parking garage of a Brooklyn shopping center on Monday morning, police arrested a man accused of starting the blaze. "I’m sorry. I apologize," Avon Stephens, 23, said to reporters as he was taken out of the 63rd Precinct stationhouse on Monday evening.

The FDNY started receiving calls about a fire at the Kings Plaza mall at 8:30 a.m., and the conflagration quickly grew to a 7-alarm. As the blaze engulfed the parking garage, witnesses said they heard explosions "like bombs going off." Six civilians and 22 firefighters suffered injuries, including smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion. FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. "Working under those conditions with this amount of smoke and this amount of heat, wearing what they wear, one can only imagine what they went through."

Local car dealerships rent space from the parking garage to keep stock, and over 130 cars were destroyed. An FDNY source told the Post that the parking garage was so hot "the paint peeled off the floor. All the light fixtures were burnt, melted."

The Post also reports the bulk of a dealership's Mercedes Benz stock was wiped out. "'It’s a lot of money,' said a dealership employee. 'The most expensive car we have there is $126,000 and that’s the S-Class.' The others included C-Class, E-Class, S-Class, SUVs and GLS models, which another worker said cost at least $70,000, each."

Commissioner Nigro added that the Department of Buildings will now inspect the integrity of the structure.

A motive for the arson is unclear, but Stephens had reportedly been told by parking garage security not to sleep there.

The Kings Plaza Mall remains closed.