An arsonist may have set the Queens garage blaze that killed two suspected squatters over the weekend, and cops are now investigating both deaths as homicides, officials said Tuesday.
Edward Daniel Jacobs, 35, and a woman who has not been identified pending family notification died in the fire that erupted around 6:30 a.m. Saturday in the detached structure on 91st Avenue near 175th Street in Jamaica, authorities said.
Police now say the blaze appears suspicious. They did not reveal why.
Either way, investigators are looking into whether the pair had been squatting in the garage, an FDNY source told The Post on Saturday.
There was “heavy clutter” in the space, an NYPD official said.
The home’s front door had no lock on it, said Fahim Shawon, a student studying at Brooklyn’s St. Francis College who lived on the home’s second floor, to The Post.
People could often be seen coming and going from the first floor and the garage out back, Shawon said over the weekend.
“I used to not even know that people lived in the garage,” he said. “One day, the cops came, and they were searching for people … and they told me.
“Last night, there were four or five [people] on the stairs,” he added. “I just rushed past them to my door. On the stairs, you see needles, smoking. I have seen those things. It was always bad things.”
