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“He must’ve been alive and trying to hold on when the floor above him collapsed,” said a firefighter who was at the predawn blaze at the former Toddle Inn on Broad Avenue on Wednesday, March 6.
Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella identified the victim on Friday as 42-year-old Xavier Contreras.
An Ecuadoran national, the homeless Contreras sometimes joined the groups of day laborers waiting for passing contractors in nearby Palisades Park, just a few blocks up Broad Avenue from the fire scene.
He was better known to area responders the past several years for trespassing, drunken episodes that required EMS responses and various misdemeanors.
Last December, the 5-foot-4-inch, 135-pound Contreras freed himself from a leg restraint and kicked a 40-year-old female EMT in the face after she and colleagues from Englewood Hospital and Medical Center picked him up for alcohol treatment, Palisades Park police said.
New Jersey puts police, other emergency responders and other public employees in a special category when it comes to assault.
What is a simple disorderly persons charge when it involves civilians becomes a felony -- with penalties of up to 18 months in prison and $10,000 in fines upon conviction – when an emergency responder is attacked.
A judge in Hackensack released Contreras the following day, however, under New Jersey’s bail reform law.
He eventually ended up at the 125-year-old corner building at 850 Broad Avenue (Route 9).
The gas and electricity had long since been turned off and the windows and doors boarded up to deter squatters when the 2½-story structure sold for roughly $1.2 million this past December, records show.
Plans were to tear it down later this month, according to local officials.
Although responders initially believed the place was vacant, it "apparently was being occupied as a multi-family dwelling," a source told Daily Voice.
Responders would soon find that out.
Firefighters responding to the call were met by heavy flames shortly before 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. They mounted an exterior attack anchored by aerial ladders positioned off the corners of Broad and Maple avenues.
Two alarms went to three bells barely 15 minutes in.
Five or so minutes later the first floor collapsed.
It was shortly after 3 a.m., a half-hour or so into the blaze, when the rest of the building crumpled.
The fire was declared under control around 4 a.m.
Musella’s investigators were immediately called when Contreras’s body was discovered soon after.
Fear that another body might be in the rubble proved unfounded.
“We have a report of a missing person who normally stays there," a responder at the scene told Daily Voice late Wednesday afternoon. That person “could have run for it,” he said.
Investigators didn't say whether they consider that person a suspect, a person of interest or a victim.
Musella said Friday that members of his Arson Task Force were continuing their investigation. He hasn’t yet said whether they consider the cause arson or accident.
If they determine the building was torched, whoever was responsible will face severe consequences if caught.
Assisting Ridgefield's firefighters were colleagues from Carlstadt, Cliffside Park, Englewood, Englewood Cliffs, Fairview, Leonia, Palisades Park, Ridgefield, Ridgefield Park and Teaneck, along with the Countywide Emergency Response team.
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Damien Danis and Jo Fehl supplied photos and information from the scene.
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