Alpine Motel’s ex-owner surrenders to start prison sentence for deadly fire
The former owner of the Alpine Motel turned himself in on Tuesday to start his prison sentence.
Adolfo Orozco, who pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment, had been managing the Alpine Motel Apartments when a 2019 fire killed six people there. It was the deadliest residential fire in Las Vegas history.
During a brief hearing on Tuesday, Orozco wore all black and spoke only to confirm that he had no objection to his detainment. His lawyer, Dominic Gentile, said he also had no issue.
In June, when Orozco was sentenced to 19 to 48 months in prison, District Judge Jacqueline Bluth did not order that he be taken into custody immediately. Instead, the judge allowed Orozco 90 days to retain property management before he begins serving his sentence.
Prosecutors have said Orozco acted like a “slumlord” in his failure to maintain the property leading up to the 2019 fire. Defense attorneys argued that others shared responsibility and that Orozco was not aware of issues such as a bolted back door and a hallway obstructed with refrigerators.
Bluth previously said that tenants testified at Orozco’s preliminary hearing that their bathrooms lacked ceilings or the ceilings were coming down, that they used stoves and ovens to survive the winter because there was no working heat and that the apartments were “completely infested with bedbugs, cockroaches,” and had doors that wouldn’t shut. The second- and third-floor hallways didn’t have lighting, she said, and electrical outlets didn’t work or sparked when a tenant tried to use them.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that a tenant’s unattended stove, used to heat his unit, started the fire.
“I do not think that you are a malicious human,” Bluth told Orozco at the time of his sentencing. “I don’t think that you wanted people to get hurt or you wanted people to die. But I do absolutely think you knew how bad and how dangerous things were at that place. I think those individuals were living in complete squalor.”
Contact Akiya Dillon at adillon@reviewjournal.com.