NEW YORK (AP) -- A man who reeked of gasoline when he entered a police station implicating himself in the death of a woman set afire in an elevator was charged Sunday with dousing her in a flammable liquid and tossing a Molotov cocktail on her.
Jerome Isaac, of Brooklyn, was arrested on murder and arson charges in the death of 73-year-old Deloris Gillespie, police said. The 47-year-old Isaac walked into a police precinct overnight and told authorities he had started a fire, New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said.
Browne wouldn't comment on a motive but had said before the arrest that the suspect knew Gillespie. It wasn't immediately clear if Isaac had an attorney.
Gillespie was ambushed in the elevator of her Brooklyn apartment building on Saturday afternoon, doused with an accelerant and set afire with a Molotov cocktail, Browne said. The suspect had been waiting for her when the elevator doors opened to the fifth floor of her apartment building in Prospect Heights, police said.
"It was apparent he knew she was on the elevator," he said Saturday.
The attack happened shortly after 4 p.m., lasted about a minute and was recorded by two video cameras, including one inside the small elevator.
Police released still images of the suspect Saturday night, showing him in a black jacket, wearing what appear to be surgical gloves and with a white dust mask perched atop his head like a pair of sunglasses. He is holding what appears to be a canister with a nozzle and spraying as he steps into the elevator.
Jaime Holguin, the manager of news development for The Associated Press and who lives on the same floor as Gillespie, said he and his girlfriend had taken the elevator on their way out of the building shortly before the attack. They didn't see anyone on the floor with them but did notice an odd smell, as if someone was painting, he said.
Holguin said police told them later that the assailant was already in the building and perhaps had hidden on another floor when they left their apartment.
He remembered Gillespie as nice but sometimes a little off. "At least with me, some days she'd be very, very pleasant, and then the next time, she would almost ignore me," he said.
Gillespie also went through a period this year where she would place duct tape over her apartment door whenever she left.
He said the man in the photos released by police looked like a man who had lived with Gillespie for about 6 months or so toward the end of 2010.
"It seemed like during the time he was here, he was kind of helping her out in her apartment," Holguin said.
He said he had exchanged hellos with the man, and they talked occasionally about Holguin's dog.
The man seemed to stop staying there around the beginning of 2011, but Holguin said he spotted him on the street near the building months after that.
"When we started to see him on the street, he looked a lot more disheveled," Holguin said.
Holguin said that when he and his girlfriend saw the images of the suspect, "We were like, `Oh, my God!'"
In the video, the elevator doors opens to the floor where Gillespie's apartment was located and the assailant steps in and sprays her, Browne said.
Gillespie, who had grocery bags in her arms, turned about 180 degrees and then crouched to protect herself, he said. But the man sprayed her directly in the face and continued to spray her "sort of methodically" over her head and parts of her body as the bags draped off her arms, Browne said. She turned and retreated to the back of the elevator.
Then, Browne said, Isaac pulled out a barbecue-style lighter, used it to ignite a rag in a bottle and then waited for a few seconds before using the flames to set her afire, causing smoke to fill the elevator.
The man backed out as she fell to the floor of the elevator, Browne said, and seemed to pause before tossing the bottle inside the elevator and onto her.
Neighbors reported a fire in the building, unaware that the woman was burning to death in the elevator.
Residents were evacuated and kept away from the six-story building for hours Saturday night as police investigated.
On Sunday, Holguin said the fifth floor was a mess, with a melted elevator door and a layer of water on the floor.
