Police have charged a man with three counts for murder for allegedly setting fire to a boarding house in Newtown in Sydney’s inner-west on Tuesday.
The bodies of three people were recovered from the rubble of the building which was allegedly doused with an accelerant and ignited at about 1am. The search remained ongoing on Wednesday morning.
Police said more bodies could be found in the boarding house and a neighbouring property after several residents were trapped inside.
The man, 45-year-old Richard Hotoran, was charged with three murders and one count of destroying property by fire or explosion on Wednesday morning after he attended a Surry Hills police station and was questioned by detectives.
It is reported Hotoran was a resident of the Newtown boarding house which is used as a refuge for vulnerable people.
A witness told police they saw a man running from the building shortly before a loud explosion set it alight.
Investigators first on the scene said they believed the fire was “maliciously lit” and were treating it as suspicious. They later found a fuel canister dumped under a nearby car.
NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Peter Cotter said investigators would attempt to search the upper floors of the boarding house on Wednesday.
“We still haven’t been able to explore all the rooms in the boarding house so fingers crossed that the death toll won’t rise but we still have some fears that people could be unaccounted for yet,” he told ABC Radio Sydney on Tuesday evening.
“We’ve made some inroads into the ground floor, and we’re inspecting that with the structural engineers.
“We’re hoping we will be able to get up into that first storey (today) and make sure that we recover what we know is there and then clearly look for any other people who might have perished.”
Three residents were taken to hospital and five people escaped the blaze unharmed.
A friend of one of the residents in hospital, an 80-year-old man, said he feared for his wellbeing because he had no home in Newtown to return to.
“He has got nowhere to go – he’s the sort of person that this is his community, this is his life.”
The man remains in critical condition after it is believed he jumped from the first-storey window to escape the fire.
