New Zealand police have charged a 48-year-old man with five counts of murder in connection with a deadly hostel fire.
He had already been detained and charged in connection with arson in Wellington last month.
Loafers Lodge, a four-storey emergency housing hostel in the capital, was gutted by fire on May 16, killing five people.
The incident has sparked renewed debate about New Zealand’s housing crisis as the site was home to people from vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.
Located just a block away from Wellington City Hospital, many hospital workers also relied on it for short-term housing.
Wellington police told reporters on Thursday that they had notified the victims’ families of the prosecution’s allegations. He did not provide any details of the allegations.
The deadly fire broke out shortly after midnight local time on May 16. Police soon opened a homicide investigation, and said they were treating the fire as an act of arson.
The victims were five men aged between 50 and 67, police said.
At least 99 residents were living in the building on the night of the fire.
When it erupted, some were forced to crawl to safety through the smoke. The rest huddled on the roof waiting to be rescued.
A resident, Tala Sulli, said she had jumped out of her window to escape the flames.
“I was on the top floor, and I couldn’t go through the hallway because there was so much smoke so I jumped out the window,” he previously told JEE News.
“It smelled like poison,” he said.
Amid conflicting accounts from residents, Wellington fire officials said last month they could not confirm whether smoke alarms had gone off in the building.
Many people in New Zealand have been forced out of the housing market by skyrocketing property prices, rising rents and a lack of government-subsidised homes.
The use of emergency accommodation in the country also skyrocketed during the pandemic. Government figures show that the stopgap solution has become a long-term option for many people.
