A woman being sought by cops for setting a Queens arson that left her ex-boyfriend and his new female friend dead screamed, “I don’t care if you die!” as she fled the scene, according to police and witnesses.
The two-story garage where the victims were squatting on 91st Ave. near 175th St. in Jamaica as went up in flames at about 6:35 a.m. on Nov. 2. Shocked neighbors chased the suspected arsonist for a short distance but lost her.
Cops suspect the fire was set by a former girlfriend of victim Edward Jacobs, police sources told the Daily News.
Edward Jacobs
“This is a jealous girlfriend,” friend Sad-e Jean Baptiste, 26, said of the suspect. “[Jacobs] didn’t deserve this. He didn’t do nothing bad in this world to deserve this.”
Jacobs, 35, died in the blaze along with a woman visiting him, Anastasia “Star” Ettienne, 33. Their deaths have been deemed homicides by the NYPD.
“[The suspect] did tell me a couple of times that she wanted to do this,” Jean Baptiste said. “She told a couple of people that next time she sees him with another girl, ‘I swear I’ll set him on fire.’ This is f—ed up.”
Firefighters worked at the scene of the arson that left two people dead. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
Ettienne initially escaped the flames but went back in to try and save Jacobs, according to a man who was living in the garage with Jacobs and managed to get out unscathed.
“We were upstairs,” the man recalled. “Eddie was sleeping, and Star and I were talking and she was laughing. Somebody comes in the garage. We didn’t know who it was at first, but we recognized her voice and she said, ‘You’re going to die today! I can’t believe you keep doing this to me! You’re going to die!”
“We smelled something sweet burning,” he added. “We ran out, and the couch was on fire and we had to jump over it. We had to jump. I had to jump over to get out. Star jumped over it with me, but she went back to save E. He was still groggy when she woke him up. “
Ettienne never made it back out. Both her and Jacobs died from smoke inhalation and burns at the scene.
“I got out, but I had to get through all the clutter,” the survivor said. “The whole front of the garage was on fire.”
After initially being called to an incorrect address one block away, firefighters located the burning garage, FDNY Battalion Chief Jack Flatley said shortly after the fire was brought under control.
“There was a lot of smoke,” Flatley said. “There was flames coming out of the garage. … We believed from reports, and neighbors’ reports, that people were living in there, so we did a diligence search and were able to locate the two victims.”
The arsonist may have started the fire by pouring gasoline on the couch and some clutter on the stairway, cops said. The couch was blocking the stairway.
Jacobs had been “building a man cave for us on the second floor of the garage, and he couldn’t get the couch all the way up by himself,” the survivor said, explaining why the couch was blocking the stairs.
“It was an abusive relationship,” the survivor said of the relationship between Jacobs and his ex. “She told everybody [in the past] she was going to burn his house down, that she was going to kill him. We just laughed at her.”
“It’s sad,” he added. “I loved all three of them.”
Arson victim Anastasia “Star” Ettienne with her children.
Ettienne’s family didn’t know she had died until a family friend told them about the fire and said he had heard one of the victims might be Star.
Her sister Jah’Aisha Ettienne contacted the morgue and described her sibling’s tattoos in order to get a confirmation, which was made through fingerprints the next day.
“My mother is lost, distraught,” the heartbroken sister said. “It’s hard to lose your child.”
Ettienne had been “dealing with being on drugs and trying to get off drugs and not trying to have that around her kids,” her sister said.
“She was really trying to get herself better for her kids and her new grandchild,” said the sister, who put together a GoFundMe seeking donations for funeral expenses. “We’re a very close-knit family. So it’s extremely, extremely hard.”
With Roni Jacobson and Julian Roberts-Grmela
