ONTARIO, Calif. — Authorities are scrutinizing a social media video as a crucial piece of evidence in their probe of a large-scale warehouse fire that erupted early Tuesday in Ontario, California.
Arson specialists suggest the footage captures scenes of toilet paper being ignited inside a warehouse, accompanied by a voice expressing dissatisfaction with pay, stating, “If you’re not going to pay us enough to (expletive) live or afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this.”
Law enforcement has apprehended 29-year-old Chamel Abdul-Karim, suspecting him of felony arson. Officials report that Abdul-Karim was employed through a third-party agency at the Kimberly-Clark Distribution Center during the incident. While investigators are analyzing the video, they have yet to verify if Abdul-Karim is the individual depicted.
A colleague of Abdul-Karim recounted his brief encounter with the suspect just before the blaze began, noting there was initially no indication of his involvement.
“There was no suspicion that it was him; in fact, he was missing. Everyone was trying to find him. Initially, the robots were blamed. We were almost 100% sure it was the robots until, of course, the video surfaced,” said Alex Montero from San Bernardino.
“There was no suspicion that it was him, actually he was missing. So everyone was trying to find him. Everyone was blaming the robots at first. We were almost 100% sure it was the robots until the action in the video of course,” said Alex Montero of San Bernardino.
The fire, which erupted shortly after 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, destroyed the more than one-million-square-foot facility. Firefighters were able to contain the blaze to the building, and no injuries were reported. The warehouse was filled with paper products from familiar brands like Kleenex to Huggies diapers.
Fire officials said arson was suspected almost immediately because of how quickly the fire spread inside the facility. Ontario Fire Department Chief Mike Gerken described the behavior of the fire as unusual.
“Definitely it was an uncharacteristic fire, just the fire behavior that they were experiencing inside and the rapid spread of that fire for such a large building, to move that quickly – it definitely pushed our firefighters into that defensive operation, and that was one indication that it could possibly be arson in nature,” Gerken said.
In a final clip of the video, a corridor of the warehouse appears to be engulfed in flames as the person recording states, “There goes your inventory.”
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