Brooklyn Beautician May Have Used Salon Chemicals to Blow Up Her Apartment Building

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Francisca Figueroa, a 48-year-old Borough Park resident and Park Slope salon owner, may have used hair treatment chemicals from her business to blow up her apartment building last weekend, police sources told the New York Daily News.

Figueroa and another building resident, 64-year-old Ligia Puello, were killed in the Oct. 3 explosion at 4206 13th Ave.

Puello was in the stairwell when the blast hit, authorities said, and died from smoke inhalation and flash burns.

Investigators know the blast originated in Figueroa’s second-floor apartment. However, the exact cause of the blast is still unknown.

The Daily News reported that Figueroa sent texts to her children before the explosion, telling them she loved them and that she was sorry. She is also reported to have posted “suicidal thoughts” to social media before she died.

“Investigators are probing whether she used chemicals from nearby Franchezka Unisex Salon to create the explosion that tore off the front of the three-story building on the bustling shopping strip,” the newspaper reported, citing police sources.

The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) has ruled out a gas leak as the source of the explosion.

Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro released the following statement this week:

“The investigation into the cause preliminarily focused on the possibility of natural gas being involved due to information from the building landlord that the occupant of the second-floor apartment — which is where the explosion/fire originated — had been removing a stove while in the course of vacating the apartment.

Information obtained since then, and confirmed by examination of the building gas meters, found that there was no natural gas flowing to the second-floor apartment since June 26 — and that before the explosion no significant natural gas flow into any part of the building had occurred.”

The building is now no more than a pile of debris on 13th Avenue.

Rescue crews dug through the rubble for signs of Figueroa for two days.

“She was a fighter — a real hard worker. She never said no to anything,” the missing woman’s sister, Milagros, told ABC7. Milagros said she had been on the phone with her sister directly before the explosion. “She was very calm and said she had to clean. It was less than five minutes, and I never spoke to her again,” she said.

Figueroa had recently been evicted by her landlord, and was in the process of moving out of her apartment, according to reports. The gas flow to her apartment had reportedly been shut off because she hadn’t paid her gas bill.

A neighbor told the New York Post that Figueroa was involved in a “bitter” court dispute with her landlord, who has been trying to evict her for some time. “The landlord told me it took a very long time to get Figueroa out… ,” the neighbor said. “There were bad feelings on both sides.”

The New York Times detailed the dispute:

In June, the owner of the building, Terry Sussman, sought a warrant to evict Ms. Figueroa in Housing Court. Records show that a judgment was reached against Ms. Figueroa, who did not have a lawyer, and the warrant was issued in July. A city marshal was assigned to execute the warrant, but a city official with direct knowledge of the case said the landlord never contacted the marshal, preferring to work it out with Ms. Figueroa and avoid having her forcibly removed.

Ms. Figueroa had been under “too much pressure” from the landlord, her sister Niurca said in the aftermath of the explosion. A lawyer for the landlord could not immediately be reached.

A memorial for Figueroa has since been erected in front of her old salon at 5th Avenue and 12th Street, which neighbors said she ran for 20 years.

“She was excellent. People would make lines (for the salon),” Donna Delgado, 46, told the Daily News. “She was always happy go lucky.”

Thirteen additional passerby were injured when Figueroa’s building exploded. A 34-year-old man and his 9-year-old son suffered leg injuries in the blast — reportedly as they made their way home from Saturday synagogue services.

The city has set up a relief fund “to support the individuals, families and businesses affected by the recent building explosion in the area.”