BFMTV NEWS. Investigators quickly focused on the possibility of foul play in the inquiry into the fatal fire that ravaged a block of flats in Paris’s 16th arrondissement. A woman has been arrested and taken into police custody. A neighbourhood dispute may have been behind the tragedy.
The leading line of inquiry is that it was a criminal act. Less than two hours after the fire was extinguished – which, according to preliminary figures, 10 dead and around 30 injured, the Paris Public Prosecutor outlined the direction of the investigation into this tragic incident, which took place during the night between Monday and Tuesday in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, and stated that a woman had been arrested and taken into police custody.
According to BFMTV, this woman, a resident of this block set back from Rue Erlanger, suffers from mental health issues. She has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital on several occasions. At the time of her arrest, shortly after the fire broke out, the 41-year-old suspect was heavily intoxicated. These two factors could prove crucial in this survey.
Neighbourhood dispute
That evening, well before the tragedy, the police intervened in the block of flats over a neighbourhood dispute between the suspect and her neighbour. Several police sources have confirmed the accounts given by two female residents of the block to BFMTV: both speak of an altercation between a young man and the suspect, prior to the fire breaking out, over noise pollution. “She always plays her music very, very loudly,” said one of them, explaining that a resident had tried to get her to turn the noise down on Monday evening.
"I saw a young man lashing out at the far end of the long corridor. At that moment, I saw him going berserk against that door," explains a neighbour. "He was shouting very, very loudly, 'Stop, stop, stop'," continues another. “And then she said, ‘Anyway, you’re a firefighter, I’m going to set the place on fire,’ the neighbour continued. She was screaming; he was screaming at her to stop. She was screaming, she was throwing things out of the window, she was throwing plates – it was absolute chaos.”
The police then intervened. According to our information, during this intervention, the suspect did not appear threatening and the neighbour, a firefighter, had left the building to spend the night elsewhere. It was only some time after this incident that the fire broke out. Moreover, the 41-year-old woman was setting fire to a vehicle parked in the immediate vicinity of the block at the time of her arrest. According to several architectural experts we have contacted, the theory that there were multiple points of origin would be consistent with the rapid and violent spread of the fire.