Police responded to a reported domestic dispute involving a knife at a home on 130th Street in South Ozone Park around 2:42 a.m. Thursday — but as officers approached the front door, there was an explosion that was “so powerful it knocked them off their feet,” Assistant Chief of Queens South, Christopher M. McIntosh, told reporters, News.Az reports, citing New York Post.
The blast sparked a massive, five-alarm inferno that quickly spread throughout the two-and-a-half-story private home and extended to the home next door before the building dramatically collapsed.Suspect Anrup Parasram — who remains unaccounted for— was allegedly intoxicated and armed with a knife when he forced his way into the basement apartment, where his wife, daughter, and two grandchildren live, police said.
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Surveillance footage reviewed by police shows him breaking in while carrying two garbage bags filled with canisters of an unknown substance, cops said.He poured accelerant on the floor and then set himself and the apartment ablaze, sources told The Post.
The family members fled the apartment and provided responding officers with a key to get inside when “suddenly a massive fiery explosion erupted” as they reached the door, McIntosh said.
Despite being thrown back and knocked against the gates, several officers “rushed into the danger” to help any residents inside the 3-family home, he added.
Eight officers were taken to area hospitals in stable condition for minor burns, lacerations to the head, and other injuries.Four others were also hurt, according to the FDNY.
“We will start debris removal to see if we can account for anybody that might be reported missing,” FDNY Chief John M. Esposito said, adding it’s still an active scene.Rattled neighbor Jessica Irving said she heard “what sounded like gunfire” amid the chaos after the initial blast — although officials have made no suggestion there was a shooting.
Irving recalled hearing a “blood-curdling scream” as police ordered her to evacuate her house. She fled down the street in her car, she said.
“It was just a lot of commotion of yelling,” she told FreedomNewsTV.It was not immediately clear what the dispute was about.
“I want to be clear. We got very lucky today. This could have turned out very differently,” Mcintosh said. No arrests have been made, and the cause of the fire remains under investigation. Sixteen people were displaced by the fire, fire officials said.
NYPD and @FDNY executives provide updates on an ongoing investigation in Queens. https://t.co/23QMaCBvGc
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) April 30, 2026
