Thoughtless Irresponsibility Led to Fire of New York Business but Fortunately Man Responded Called a Hero

Monday June 17th, 2024, 6:21 PM reporting from Sunday June 16th, 2024, 10:30 AM-New York- Sabrina Rudin and father captured video surveillance imagery on her Phone's camera after oblivious to her surroundings. A fire broke out after a plate-glass window had been broken compressed head that exploded. The films grain white cover veil of white chemicals from the fire extinguishers blanketed the cabinet the surface the custom fruits and vegetables and the stand itself sizzled.

Rudin started his small business as a New York vender, opening the Spring Cafe Aspen, on West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, three years prior and shiny well-lit pocket place for hot beverages and nutritious snacks. The cafe had cement street walkways for resting, large windowsills and empty lot of plants underneath a liquid oasis of awning shadow cover.

Spring Cafe Aspen had been ruined as of now, early May 17 the place was decimated. Rudin had uncovered fact that explosive spark that led to the fire in the morning, has been deliberately ignited of a kindle box with lights of an open flame then holds the flame beside a plant container situated the exterior of the restaurant. The blaze increased upward and set the whole structure on flames incinerated.

A father of three children who had a vending restaurant business in 2024, discovers it a tough process having a business wrecked and three mouths to feed paying the bills. Police are investigating possible arson of Rudin's business purposely sabotaged destruction of property.

Video shot showed the fire racing upward and intentionally set by an individually visiting New York traveling through the city. The video showed the suspect obtaining an object out of his pocket like a lighter and burning a flower box causing the fire to explode the restaurant.

Rudin had be make sacrifices since the 2020 pandemic setback him and his family behind. It's been long passed hours since morning when garbage pick-up arrived chugging uptown, downtown, crosstown. Angelo Cruz, 49, had been driving his Classic Recycling truck for 12 years and had pieced together his sprawling route like a puzzle.

The Greenwich Spring Cafe Aspen has been saved, at least for a while when Rudin learned last recorded it clarified reason to pay homage checked on the area previously. Disposed trash pickups were at the lounge bars that kept hours of operation active through the graveyard shift, and he would return to close it when it was time to leave.

Making the moment is imperative, Toward the end of his schedule, he was racing urgently to get home across the Hudson River, outside of New Jersey in the Newark boroughs.

The history of Rudin's linage came to New York in the 1990s, with Sabrina, the only child was 6 or 7. New York had been the center of familiar identified documented action setting the spike for manslaughters, now verging beyond 2,000 homicides a year to six years. The village thought it cleared from the targeted access point of the mayhem, but it didn't That's what Rudin was assuming in his adolescent years.

Then Sabrina was born in the 1980s. When she was a little girl, she would ride around inside on roller skates. She loved to look out through a window at the Empire State Building.

When investors from uptown demanded to inspect the building before giving him a mortgage, he guided them, avoiding Broadway and its vacant storefronts and displaced people.

Leichter had overseen the merging of nine buildings on the block into one, by opening up the interiors and creating connecting hallways and a main lobby. It was an enormous job. He moved into one of the new apartments upstairs, and he and his wife were married by a rabbi inside.

He left Comedy Cellar and turned right on West Fourth. Ahead on the right, on the corner of Mercer Street, there was this strange, bright glow on the sidewalk and the awning above.

A chain that he had invented for New York.

In the video, the fire grows. Melted chunks of awning drip to the sidewalk like glowing rain.

Rudin’s father, Anthony Leichter, 86, had helped build up this block in the 1970s, when it was all light manufacturing, and this corner of the Village was practically deserted. One store on the block sold appliances for fireplaces. Others sold thermometers or sewing machines.

When bankers from uptown wanted to inspect the building before giving him a mortgage, he escorted them, avoiding Broadway and its vacant storefronts and homeless people.

Leichter had overseen the merging of nine buildings on the block into one, by opening up the interiors and creating connecting hallways and a main lobby. It was a colossal job. He moved into one of the new apartments upstairs, and he and his wife were married by a rabbi inside.

Then Sabrina was born in the 1980s. When she was a little girl, she would ride around inside on roller skates. She loved to look out through a window at the Empire State Building.

The family left the city in the early 1990s, when Sabrina, the only child, was 6 or 7. New York was in the grip of its record-setting peak for murders, approaching or surpassing 2,000 killings a year for six years. The Village felt removed from the center of the violence, but still. A young child gets you thinking.

They moved to Westchester County, to an old farmhouse. Leichter kept his ties to the city and commuted. Almost 15 years later, Sabrina moved back. Eventually, her parents returned, too.

Leichter could never have imagined it turning out this way, his daughter owning a cafe in this place that had once sold fireplace pokers.

Now, he was watching the video on the phone. There was a sprinkler system inside the cafe, but it did not immediately detect the fire outside, even as flames caught on the awning above. The sprinklers did not engage.

A family with a 2-year-old child lived right above the cafe. On the screen, the fire climbs toward the second floor as another minute ticks by.

‘I Know How That Feels’

Cruz drove toward the glow.

When he was 10 years old, living with his mother in Newark, their apartment was destroyed in a fire. They were driving home when it was happening. He remembers that feeling of realizing all these firefighters were running to his place.

He drew closer on West Fourth, and confirmed what he was seeing. And yet, silence. No sirens, no alarms.

“There’s people living there,” he said later. “I know how that feels.”

Minutes later, a watchman from a nearby construction site would tell firefighters about a garbage truck and the driver jumping out with this big red fire extinguisher. The driver asked the watchman to call 911. Then he was gone again, like it was part of his regular job.

His last few stops in the Lower East Side were waiting. Fire or no fire.

By the time Rudin and her father awoke that morning and arrived at the scene, the fire was long out. Before the worst sort of damage — the “God forbid” damage.

Multiple companies would have been closed for weeks. And some company owners might have exercised intentions to dismiss absolved for good, as Rudin had extorted.

But Leichter still knew contractors. He would have his daughter’s plate glass replaced in hours. It was as if they still lived upstairs, and he was — one more time — fixing something precious for his little girl on roller skates.

Hours after the fire, Rudin knew she wasn’t going anywhere. The restaurant would reopen the next day. Whatever mysterious figure had started the fire, someone else in this big, messy city had put it out.

By then, Cruz was long since done with his route and sound asleep as if it were any other day. His son would be home soon.