The disgruntled employee arrested for starting a massive fire that destroyed his company’s sprawling Ontario warehouse has been charged with several counts of felony arson.
Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, faces one count of aggravated arson and six counts of arson involving the willful and malicious burning of buildings or land, according to court records.
If convicted, he could face life in prison.
He was being held without bail Thursday and was set to be arraigned in a Rancho Cucamonga courthouse.
The blaze engulfed the nearly 1.2-million-square foot Kimberly-Clark warehouse near South Hellman Avenue and Merrill Avenue at around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Police captured Abdulkarim near the warehouse as the fire still burned.
About 20 employees were inside the warehouse when the fire broke out, including Abdulkarim, according to sources with knowledge of the case.
A clip posted by an Instagram account bearing Abdulkarim’s name shows him lighting paper goods on fire in the warehouse while taking shots at his company.
“All you had to do was pay us enough to live,” he repeats in the video.
The video shows toilet paper packages catching fire and then going up flames.
Cops said they were aware of the video and investigating it.
Sources described Abdulkarim as an angry employee who vented about his job in posts he shared online.
The warehouse that burned is worth a whopping $156 million, according to Zillow.
The building caught fire with astonishing intensity thanks to the paper products inside that fueled the flames.
Kimberly-Clark is a hygiene company that owns brands like Huggies and Kleenex.
More than 140 firefighters battled the fire, which raged through the day Tuesday.
The Ontario Fire Department led the fight against the six-alarm blaze but it was so massive that neighboring fire agencies had to help out.
Miraculously, no injuries were reported.
