Man arrested in massive Los Angeles arson fire
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A 56-year-old man has been arrested on arson charges in connection with a massive fire late last year that destroyed a Los Angeles apartment complex under construction and damaged three nearby buildings, police said on Wednesday. Dawud Abdulwali was taken into custody on Tuesday and booked on arson charges, Officer Liliana Preciado of the Los Angeles Police Department said. Abdulwali, 56, was being held on more than $1 million bail pending an initial court appearance. Authorities declined to release further information about the arrest before a press conference scheduled for Wednesday evening. The site that burned - two stories of poured concrete beneath five floors of wood framing - occupied an entire city block near the junction of two major traffic arteries - the Hollywood Freeway and the Harbor Freeway. Much of the structure, wrapped in scaffolding, collapsed in the flames, producing heat so intense that it ignited three floors of a neighboring 16-story high-rise building, melting telephones, computers and office cubicle partitions. The radiant heat also blew out windows from two other nearby office buildings, one of them, the Department of Water and Power headquarters two blocks away, raining shards of glass on firefighters working below to cool the structures with water. The building under construction was to become the latest of several faux-Italian-style luxury apartment complexes erected by developer G.H. Palmer Associates in downtown Los Angeles. (Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Sandra Maler)
