Bragg Announces Guilty Plea in Hamilton Heights Arson Case—from 2017

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. recently announced the guilty plea of Jelani Parker, 41, for intentionally starting a fire inside a Hamilton Heights apartment building that destroyed the property and injured three firefighters—on Nov. 17, 2017. Parker pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court to one count of Arson in the Second Degree. Under the terms of the plea, he is expected to be sentenced on Jan. 13, 2026 to 12 years in state prison, followed by five years of post-release supervision.

“Jelani Parker intentionally started a 6-alarm-blaze that injured three of the heroic firefighters who responded to the scene and left 35 families without homes,” said DA Bragg. “Fire poses a major hazard to our densely populated city, and this act of arson not only threatened Parker’s neighbors, but those in the surrounding area.”

That’s putting it mildly. Which isn’t to accuse DA Bragg of soft-soaping an incident that could have been much worse. His is the measured language of the diligent prosecutor who inherited a bizarre case from his predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., and saw it through to its elongated resolution.

Back in Friday, Nov. 17, 2017, the language was different. “Fire Rages on Top Floor of Harlem Apartment Building,” was the New York Post headline, published just hours after the blaze. NBC4 New York television had horrifying aerial footage of the fire, a story it headlined, “9 Hurt as Windswept Blaze Rips Through Manhattan Apartment Building: FDNY.”

“Most of the roof of the six-story building at West 144th Street and Broadway in Hamilton Heights also collapsed in the fire, which sent fireballs of debris raining down on the street and a thick wall of black smoke shooting into the skyline shortly after it broke out on the top floor around 3:15 p.m,” the outlet reported.

More than 200 FDNY personnel responded to the windswept inferno, in which several firefighters, one police officer, and one civilian were slightly injured. Firemen also rescued at least one dog from the blaze. While fears that the century-old apartment building might collapse from heavy fire and water damage were unrealized, the blaze fully displaced more than 150 residents.

The suspected perpetrator of the blaze, meanwhile, Jelani Parker, vanished. Fire marshals tracked him to North Carolina, kept tabs on him while they built their case, and later followed him to Los Angeles, where he was arrested in February 2018.

Video presented at Parker’s arraignment showed him “coming out of an elevator and walking into an apartment carrying the gas can,” reported ABC7 Eyewitness News.

Prosecutors, the report continued, accused Parker of “dousing a room in his apartment that he shared with his mother and father and allegedly setting it on fire. Minutes later, in the same video, Parker is seen leaving the smoke-filled apartment with smoke quickly filling the hallway.”

While Parker’s attorney, Xavier Donaldson, was quoted as saying, “As of right now, as I stand here, I do not have any reason to believe that my client is guilty of those charges,” this belief would prove untrue.

Why it took so long for Parker to plead guilty, or for his case to go to trial, is another story. Though Parker was held without bail after his arraignment, according to a Manhattan DA spokesperson, “On multiple occasions he was found unfit to stand trial via 730 exam and admitted to a secure psychiatric facility for months at a time until he was found fit to proceed.”

And so, finally, in late December 2025, it can be told, straight from the Office of the Manhattan D.A.:

According to court documents, statements made on the record in court, and as admitted in the defendant’s guilty plea, at approximately 2:50 p.m. on Nov. 17, 2017, Parker, a tenant in the apartment building located at 565 W. 144th St. in Hamilton Heights, entered the building with a red gas can, took the elevator to the top floor, and went into the sixth-story apartment that he shared with his mother and father.

Once inside, Parker doused a room with gas and lit it on fire. Video surveillance later obtained from the building shows Parker leaving the smoke-filled apartment at approximately 3:10 p.m., hurriedly walking down several flights of stairs, and exiting the building shortly before the fire spread to other floors. The blaze culminated in a 6-alarm fire that required more than 200 members of the FDNY to extinguish. Three responding firefighters suffered injuries.

According to Department of Correction records, Jelani Parker is a Black male, 5-foot-7, 160 pounds, and is being held without bail in the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward until his sentencing date.

Since the fire, 565 W. 144th St. has been completely renovated and reoccupied.