By Pervaiz Shallwani and Danny Gold
A 43-year-old man was found bound in his bed and shot once in the head after firefighters extinguished a fire early Sunday in a Queens apartment building, a law-enforcement official said.
More than 100 firefighters responded to the two-alarm fire in South Richmond Hill, the Fire Department said.
Once the fire was extinguished, investigators found Azeem Ali “tied at the feet with electrical cord, tied around the shoulders with speaker wire and shot one time in the head,” the official said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators believe the fire was deliberately set in the back bedroom of the second-floor apartment, where Mr. Ali was located, and investigators were treating the death as a homicide, the official said. No one else was injured in the fire.
The New York City medical examiner’s office had scheduled an autopsy on the body for Monday.
Mr. Ali’s brother arrived on the scene shortly after the fire was extinguished and positively identified him, the official said.
A friend, Edward Ramrop, 58, described Mr. Ali, known as Andy, as a hardworking Guyanese immigrant who sent money home to his wife and teenage daughter.
“He was a quiet person,” Mr. Ramrop said. “He worked as a body man, he was a machinist.”