Employee allegedly filmed setting fire to warehouse over unfair wages
A video allegedly capturing the moment the suspect of a giant warehouse fire in Ontario has been released, with an apparent employee taken in custody shortly after it was filmed.
On Tuesday April 8, a fire at a 1.2 million-square-foot Kimberly-Clark inventory holding building went up in flames after 12:30am.
According to a joint press release from the Ontario Fire Department and Ontario Police Department, approximately 175 firefighters and 15 truck companies attended the scene and fought the blaze overnight.
Per IB Times, authorities from San Bernardino County and others chipped in to help, but the facility suffered major structural damage, after the paper stock went up in flames.
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The outlet reported that the warehouse was valued at $156 million, and it contained hygiene products such as toilet paper.
The major fire soon became the subject of an unfair wage claim after 29-year-old Chamel Abdulkarim, an employee of NFI Industries, a third-party distribution company that handles Kimberly-Clark products, including Huggies, Kleenex and Scott, was arrested near the scene.
A video which was allegedly posted to Facebook by an account with the name matching Abdulkarim’s shows a person setting fire to pallets of toilet paper, claiming in the clip: “All you had to do was pay us enough to live.”
The video, which has been shared online in forum like Reddit, shows how quickly the flames spread after several products were set alight via a lighter as the cameraman claimed the ‘inventory’ was gone.
Officials are asking anyone with information to contact Detective Ryan Ronveaux at (909) 408-1748.
Abdulkarim has been arrested on multiple arson-related charges, per People, and is currently held at the West Valley Detention Center without bail.
“We have had reports that he did give some information on social media,” Ontario Police Dept. Cpl. Emily Williams told KTLA. “We can't go into specifics as to what that information is.”
The suspect is set to appear in court today (Thursday).
Alex Montero, who claimed to have met Abdulkarim at the warehouse the night of the fire, said he was able to record the clips after they had been posted online via a mutual friend.
“It was him that posted himself doing it,” Montero told the LA Times. “If not, I wouldn’t have put it out there like that.”
The man, believed to be Abdulkarim, can be heard in the video as saying: “You know, if you’re not going to pay us enough ... to afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this.”
The man in the clip then can be seen setting fire to paper rolls.
UNILAD reached out to Kimberly-Clark and the Ontario Police Department for comment.
Britt Jones