Landlord Found Guilty of Murder After Fire Kills Tenants Trapped Due to 'Illegal' Housing Conditions

A Washington, D.C., landlord who illegally modified his building was convicted Thursday of two counts of second-degree murder after a 2019 fire turned the structure into a death trap.

James G. Walker, 67, was found guilty in D.C. Superior Court of multiple charges, including 27 criminal building code violations, after a fire killed 40-year-old Fitsum Kebede and 10-year-old Yafet Solomen. Trapped by dangerous conditions that the landlord failed to fix, the victims had no way out as the fire tore through the building, prosecutors said.

Walker ran 708 Kennedy Street NW as an "illegal" rooming house, cramming tenants into unsafe, uninhabitable spaces. The building had no occupancy certificate, lacked working smoke alarms and had security gates that required keys from both sides, per the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"The most egregious violation, however, was the failure to provide an unobstructed means to escape the property," officials stated.

Authorities had warned Walker about the fire hazards before the tragedy. In March 2019, months before the deadly blaze, D.C. police flagged multiple safety violations and ordered him to fix them—yet nothing changed.

"He was instructed to correct the conditions and have the building inspected for residential use. He did not," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

On August 18, 2019, flames erupted in the basement as three tenants slept inside. Trapped behind locked gates, Kebede and Solomen had no escape. Smoke thickened. Heat intensified. By the time help arrived, both had succumbed to thermal burns and smoke inhalation.

"Walker's knowledge of the danger posed by the conditions of the property and his conscious disregard of the extreme risk that death or serious bodily injury could occur were the but-for cause of the deaths of the decedents," officials said.

D.C. officials faced backlash after it took over four minutes to dispatch firefighters to the scene, the Office of Unified Communications admitted per local news.