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Jamel Martinez: NYC 18-year-old battling depression sets home on fire, jumps to death

Jamel Martinez's father said that his son’s mental health issues may have been worsened by exposure to drugs

At least one person was dead after a fire broke out at a New York City Housing Authority apartment building in Manhattan on Saturday afternoon, September 18. As per reports, authorities were called to a kitchen blaze at an apartment in the East River Houses along 105th Street near FDR Drive just before 4.30 pm.

About 20 New York City Fire Department units with 80 members responded to the ten-story building. The fire was reportedly deemed under control by 5.12 pm. Eighteen-year-old Jamel Martinez was pronounced dead at the scene after falling from an elevated location, authorities said.

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Police sources, however, said that Martinez might have had mental health issues. They also said that he set the kitchen on fire before jumping to his death. Martinez’s grieving father James White told the New York Post that the teenager had just been released from Bellevue Hospital about a month ago after battling depression. “My daughter called me and said the house is burning up and it’s on Citizen app and that she thinks Jamel jumped off the roof and he might be dead,” he said.

White said that he had pleaded with the hospital to not release his son, whom he said had “changed” over the past couple of years. He said the pressures of graduating from high school had weighed heavily on his son. “This is my son who did this. This is my son,” said the 53-year-old. “He wasn’t supposed to leave Bellevue Hospital. I told Bellevue Hospital not to release him, take him to a program where he could get his mind right.”

White, who doesn’t live in the building, said the hospital released him anyway, though he was on prescription medication. “He went through something where his mind just relapsed. He ran away from home,” White said. “He was on the news already for a missing child. He needed help... people do not take this mental thing seriously.”

White said that his son’s mental health issues might have been worsened by exposure to drugs. Before his mental health decline and introduction to drugs, he said that his son was always into computers and technology. “He was a good kid,” White said. “He was a nice, warm sweet kid.”

Rosemary Negron, a 60-year-old resident told the New York Post that Martinez landed on top of a car. “I feel terrible,” she said. “It was a kid. I don’t know what happened to him where he would do something like that.” A 12-year-old boy also said that he heard a loud banging sound when he saw Martinez hit the car. “His mother was crying,” he told the Post. “I feel really sad.”

“He was a sweet kid. Respectable, decent, loving, and caring. Just a beautiful kid,” a 10th-floor neighbor told NY Daily News, adding that Martinez had recently graduated from high school. She also said that she and her daughter were napping in their home when the fire broke out. “All of a sudden, we couldn’t see,” she said. “There was smoke everywhere.”

She said that firefighters banged on her door and told her and her daughter to stay put. But they eventually evacuated their home. “We got up and we ran because the apartment was filling up with smoke,” she said. “We couldn’t breathe. We just ran.”