Photo: Rasi57 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Three Indian nationals, two women aged 25 and 27 and a 26-year-old man, died when fire swept through an apartment building in the German city of Bochum early on Tuesday, October 13. A 41-year-old Romanian man who lived in the same building has been arrested, and a judge on Wednesday ordered him held in custody on suspicion of murder, German police and prosecutors said.
Trapped above a burning stairwell
Firefighters were called at about 4.15 am local time to the multi-family house on Poststraße in the Hofstede district. By the time the first crews arrived, flames had already spread through the building. Thick smoke had filled the stairwell, so residents on the first and second floors were left calling for help from their windows.
Because the fire was climbing up the stairwell, crews couldn’t use it to reach the upper floors. They brought out two people with a turntable ladder and two more with portable ladders, while one person jumped onto a rescue cushion. The three bodies were found later, inside a second-floor flat, as firefighters kept working on the blaze. It took about four hours to put out. The building’s wooden staircase was completely destroyed, and the house is now thought to be uninhabitable.
Five other people were treated for smoke inhalation and taken to hospitals in Bochum. Their nationalities have not been given. The names of the three victims, and the places in India they came from, have not been made public.
Arson suspected, motive unclear
Police and prosecutors said that after a detailed investigation, including checks by a fire expert, they had ruled out a technical fault as the cause. According to prosecutors, the case against the suspect firmed up as the inquiry went on. He now faces allegations of three counts of murder and of arson causing death. He made no statement to homicide detectives about the accusations, a prosecution spokesperson said, and investigators say they can’t yet say anything about a possible motive.
Police said the man was already known to them for assault and property offences. Officers had also been called to the building on Sunday, two days before the fire, over a dispute, but police said it is not yet clear whether that incident is linked to the fire.
A tragedy of a kind Bochum has not experienced in decades.
Jörg Lukat, Mayor of Bochum
What neighbours describe
A woman who said she lived in the building told the German news agency dpa that the three victims had moved in only a few weeks earlier. She said the suspect, who has a wife and three children, had lived there for about a year and had repeatedly quarrelled with several people in the house, sometimes coming to blows. On the night of the fire, she said, she heard a commotion, opened her door to hot smoke and flames, shut it again and called the fire brigade before being rescued from her window by ladder.
What happens next
The suspect is now in pre-trial detention while the homicide squad works to establish what happened that night and why. Police say the three victims have been identified, but their names have not been released, and no details have yet been announced about consular help for their families or the return of their bodies to India.
