An arsonist may have caused the Queens garage fire that killed two suspected squatters last weekend. Police 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 broke out around 6:30 a.m. Saturday at the detached building on 91st Avenue near 175th Street in Jamaica, authorities said.
Police now say the fire appears suspicious. They did not reveal why.
Whatever the case, 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 room, an NYPD official said.
The front door of the house did not have a lock, Fahim Shawon, a student attending St. Francis College in Brooklyn who lived on the second floor of the house, told The Post.
People could often be seen coming and going from the first floor and the rear garage, Shawon said this weekend.
“Before, I didn’t even know people lived in the garage,” he said. “One day the police came and they were looking for people… and they told me.
“Last night there were four or five [people] on the stairs,” he added. “I just ran past them to my door. On the stairs you see smoking needles. I’ve seen those things. They were always bad things.”
The possible arson was just the latest apparent crime involving squatters in the area.
A massive fire in Irvington, N.J., destroyed a row of five homes last month — and authorities said they were investigating whether squatters who took over one of the homes were responsible for the blaze.
About 30 people, including 26 adults and four children, were left homeless by the inferno.
Last spring, two teenage squatters also allegedly beat a woman to death in Manhattan.
The victim, Nadia Vitels, 52, had returned to her East 31st Street apartment after a trip to Spain and was greeted by 18-year-old squatters Kensly Alston and Halley Tejada, 19, authorities said.
Tejada began kicking and pounding Vitels with his feet, prompting his disturbed girlfriend Alston to urge him to put on shoes — so he wouldn’t hurt himself, officials said.
Vitels was severely beaten but was still breathing when the murderous couple stuffed her into a duffel bag and pushed her into a closet, officials said. The victim eventually died — and she was found with her leg out of the pocket and a cord wrapped around her neck, prosecutors said in court.
The teens were charged with a slew of raps, including second-degree murder.
