LOS ANGELES -- A teenager was arrested Wednesday in Texas for the arson fire that raced through a downtown apartment house last September, killing 24 people.
Police Cmdr. William Booth said Humberto De La Torre, 19 -- whose surname is the same as at least six of the victims -- was arrested in Laredo, Texas. Details of his arrest were not disclosed pending a news conference Thursday.
Booth said the teenager would be booked for murder when he is returned to Los Angeles.
Interim Fire Chief Allen Evansen announced two weeks after the Sept. 4 fire at the four-story Dorothy Mae Apartment-Hotel that the blaze was started with an 'accellerant.'
'It was an incendiary fire,' he said. 'It was not accidental.'
Eighteen people died as they tried to flee the smoke and flames of the building on Sunset Boulevard where nearly 200 people, mostly Latinos, lived. Six others died later of burns and other injuries.
All the victims -- including 11 children -- were members of just four families, the De La Torres among them. Most of the residents of the apartment came from the same small Mexican village, El Salitre.
Although arson was initially ruled out, Evansen said subsequent laboratory analysis of debris found at the scene determined the blaze had been deliberately set. He refused to disclose the type of accellerant use, saying it was pertinent to the investigation.
Evensen said the fire was set near the front of the building on the second floor and smouldered slowly with no flames.
'It went into a stage of incomplete combustion,' he said. 'Then someone opened the doors and the inflow of oxygen fed it and it flashed.'
Before the fire engines arrived, several people jumped from the second story to escape. Others later jumped from third-and fourth-story windows, suffering severe injuries.
It was the second worst apartment fire in the city's history. In 1973, the Stratford Hotel fire -- also caused by an arsonist -- claimed 25 lives.