A 6-year-old boy has admitted to starting a weekend fire in an Oakland apartment building that displaced scores of residents and left two Pittsburgh firefighters injured, police said Monday.
Detectives interviewed the boy after investigators learned that a juvenile was believed to have started the fire. He admitted to using matches to light a fire in the laundry room on the second floor of one of the apartments.
No criminal charges will be filed, police said.
The fire was initially called in as two alarms but grew to five over the next hour as the flames spread to a neighboring building. The blaze was reported shortly before 2:30 p.m. in the 2000 block of De Ruad Street just off Fifth Avenue.
“This was a very stubborn fire in a very large and old building,” Pittsburgh fire Chief Darryl Jones said. “We tried to make some aggressive interior attacks, and we had to go defensive.”
The two injured firefighters were taken to a hospital in stable condition. One suffered from smoke inhalation, and the other had an unknown injury.
All 74 residents were accounted for from all 48 apartment units, officials said.
First Published: August 19, 2019, 6:45 p.m.
