Worker Held in Hotel Fire Fatal to 96 : Other Employees May Also Be Charged in Puerto Rico Blaze

Federal officials today arrested a Teamsters Union member who worked at the Dupont Plaza Hotel and charged him with setting the New Year’s Eve fire that killed 96 people at the posh hotel.

Court documents filed at U.S. District Court in Old San Juan identified the arrested man as maintenance worker Hector Escudero Aponte. It was the first arrest in the case.

A lawyer close to the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said authorities are also considering charges against other hotel employees who reportedly saw the worker set the fire.

Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, has no death penalty.

Escudero Aponte used a Sterno-like fuel used for cooking to set fire to new furniture stacked in the hotel’s ground-floor ballroom, a five-page complaint filed by the FBI in U.S. District Court said.

About 140 Injured

The fire, which injured about 140 people, raged out of control through the ballroom and then the casino directly above.

The FBI claimed that Escudero Aponte confessed to his role in the fire. He was charged before U.S. Magistrate Justo Arenas with having “maliciously damaged and destroyed by means of a fire” the 22-story, 439-room hotel.

Escudero Aponte was held at the judicial center in suburban Hato Rey. Arenas ordered the suspect held without bail until Friday. A hearing was set for Jan. 20.

Witnesses said the suspect, wearing jeans and a striped sports shirt, was surrounded by federal agents and commonwealth police as he was led into the investigation room. He was described as having brown hair, a bushy mustache and appeared to be in his 30s.

Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon has said tense labor-management relations may have been a motive for the fire but he has refused to blame either the Teamsters Union, which had planned a strike, hotel management or non-Teamster employees.

Denied Involvement

Representatives of the Teamsters Union were not immediately available for comment. Earlier, Teamster officials denied any involvement in the fire.

The Dupont was evacuated during the fire and has stood vacant ever since. A 10-foot-high fence was erected around the site last week to protect the evidence.

Last Friday, lawyers for 33 people from Puerto Rico, Mexico and New York filed a lawsuit seeking $22 million for plaintiffs including the family of a hotel worker who died in the fire.

The suit claims that the Dupont Plaza was negligent because it ignored “threats from known sources that there would be a fire on the 31st of Dec., 1986, inasmuch as there had been two fires a few days prior to the 31st.”

The suit also alleges that the hotel management ignored a bomb threat telephoned to police about two hours before the fire broke out.