Firebug accused of torching NYC building, injuring 9 is freed without bail, back in neighborhood
This firebug was allowed to bug out.
A Brooklyn man who allegedly torched a Bushwick apartment building last month — injuring nine tenants — was cut loose without bail this week and is already terrifying folks in his old neighborhood, The Post has learned.
Stanley Garcia, 63, was arrested Wednesday by cops and hit with a slew of arson charges for allegedly sparking a July 16 blaze on Evergreen Avenue.
Brooklyn prosecutors had asked for $20,000 bail at his arraignment Thursday, but Judge Christopher Whitehair gave Garcia supervised release with no bail.
Even under New York state’s controversial 2019 bail reform laws, the top charge of second-degree arson against Garcia is eligible.
While lawyers for Garcia declined to comment and prosecutors did not return calls, neighbors who lost their home in the fire said they were less than pleased.
“I was out there on Knickerbocker Avenue and I saw the guy,” said Evelyn Garcia, who lived on the third floor before the blaze. “I felt traumatized. I felt traumatized to the point where I kept calling the cops and they said that they were gonna send someone.
“And in the end, they didn’t really send nobody,” she said.
Stanley Garcia, described by neighbors as a longtime nuisance, allegedly set the blaze around 3 a.m.
According to court papers released after his arrest, he actually tried to block tenants of the building from escaping the fire he set by blocking the door with his body. They were able to push him out of the way and get out.
“He’s crazy,” local resident John Palma told The Post after the fire. “All of our neighbors in that building have been complaining about the guy. Like, he’s been here for about a year and they keep calling the police and the police come pick him up and then he is just brought back.”
One tenant at the building at 127 Evergreen Ave. said he and his cousin nabbed Garcia setting the fire and confronted him — and knocked him on his butt after he charged at them.
But the firebug allegedly ran back inside yelling before he finally took off.
Cops put out a call for his arrest and found him on Wednesday.
Whitehair, the judge who let him go, was appointed to the city Criminal Court by Mayor Eric Adams in May, after working for 15 years at the ultra-liberal defense attorney group Queens Defenders.
“Help us to put him back, or at least to like lock him up because he almost killed people,” another tenant said. “Families and children.
“Due to him, I have to go to therapy. My mom, my brother, my 4-year-old son,” they said. “We have to use pumps, like air pumps. Like as if we had asthma when I was going completely healthy.”
