FD Report: Latest Xu-House Fire Began With Burning Basement Mattress

Either a cigarette or mixed wiring could have ignited a mattress in a basement of a Newhallville three-family house that burst into flames earlier this year.

Those details are included in a newly released report that sheds light on what may have caused just the latest of five fires in two years at different properties controlled by Bethany-based landlord Jianchao Xu.

The 12-page report was written on March 7 by city fire inspector Tomas B. Reyes about the Jan. 31 fire at 126 Sheffield Ave. That property is owned by CLLYTREPORPNEVAHWEN LLC, a holding company controlled by Xu.

Click here to read the fire investigation report in full.

Reyes was not able to determine exactly what caused the fire that displaced six tenants and wrecked much of the building. Interviews and evidence on scene pointed him to two possible ​“ignition sources” — a cigarette and a junction box with mixed wiring, both in the basement.

Based on his investigation, Reyes wrote, it’s ​“very well possible” that someone in the basement ​“could have improperly discarded a cigarette end at the floor near the wall that surrounded the oil tank.

“The cigarette end could have ignited something, causing a fire, and the fire continued to grow then lighting the wall surrounding the oil tank and forming the ​‘V pattern’ present, while extending to the mattress which allow[ed] the fire to grow and move across the mattress to the wall under the main carrying beam then to the resulting areas that were damaged.”

The head of the city’s housing code enforcement agency said that two inspections that took place in the months prior to the Jan. 31 fire found no one living in the basement. Five former residents of 126 Sheffield also told the Independent that, to the best of their knowledge, no one had been sleeping down there. 

One former second-floor tenant, Anthony Bruton, 37, told the Independent by text message on Friday that he remembers going to see if the fire was coming from the basement. He found that ​“the door was ajar & it shouldn’t have been. We didn’t leave the door open or unlocked so how could this have happened? Something doesn’t seem right.” He said the fire caused him to lose both his residence and his job. It’s been a ​“very tough time” since then.

“I’m still picking up the pieces. It was traumatizing,” said Diane Chatman, 65, who was living in a rented room on 126 Sheffield’s first floor at the time of the fire. She said she’s now renting an apartment in another local property owned by Jianchao Xu.

Tony Edwards, 66, said he rented a single room on 126 Sheffield’s second floor at the time of the fire. These nearly two months later, he said he’s still homeless, sleeping at Varick Church’s warming center on Dixwell Avenue at nights and trying to get an apartment with the city’s housing authority.

Edwards said this was the second time in less than two years he’s been displaced by a fire at a Xu-owned local rental property. The first time was in November 2023 at 56 Avon St. ​“One fire, I lost everything,” he said about that Avon Street blaze. ​“And then another fire [at 126 Sheffield]. Come on, man. This is ridiculous.”

5 Fires In 2 Years

The Independent recently obtained a copy of the 126 Sheffield fire report in response to a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sent to the city’s fire department about investigations into the five different fires at five different Xu-owned local apartment buildings that took place over the course of two years.

The reports that the Independent obtained do not provide a clear, consistent through-line for why these fires took place at these Xu-owned properties.

The fire department has labeled the causes of the fires at 126 Sheffield on Jan. 31, at 370 Mansfield St. in October 2023, and at 56 Avon St. in November 2023 as ​“undetermined.”

The cause of a basement fire that displaced 20 people from 38 Bishop St. in January 2023, meanwhile, was determined by city police and firefighters to be arson, by a man at the property who lit a crate filled with papers.

The Independent has yet to receive a copy of the report about the fire that took place at 516 Elm St. in October 2024 that left 32-year-old New Havener Kenneth Mims dead. That fatal blaze is being investigated by the Connecticut State Police Fire & Explosion Investigation Unit.

The city fire department reports do, however, include details that point to some recurring findings at these various Xu-owned properties. 

Improperly discarded cigarettes are referenced in the reports for 126 Sheffield and 370 Mansfield. And deferred maintenance or potentially dangerous building system configurations show up in the reports for 126 Sheffield and 58 Avon. (“It is more than probable this fire was the result of a mechanical failure, within the furnace and or duct work,” the 58 Avon report reads. ​“This conclusion was based on multiple tenants reporting heavy black smoke coming from the vents and Dr. Jianchao’s own admission of never having the furnace or duct work serviced or cleaned since the time he had taken ownership.”)

Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Liam Brennan told the Independent that the city’s housing code enforcement agency conducted two separate inspections of 126 Sheffield in the months preceding the fire — a spot check in October 2024 and a residential licensing inspection in January 2025.

“During both visits, our inspectors accessed the basement and found no evidence of occupancy or anyone living in that space,” he said.

He continued: ​“While we do not know for certain that this property was being used as a rooming house, the fire inspector’s findings certainly raise that concern. This unfortunate incident highlights why rooming house health and safety enforcement is so critical for our community. These regulations exist to protect lives and prevent exactly this type of dangerous situation. However, conditions can change between inspections, and we rely on residents to alert us to potential safety concerns. When neighbors collaborate with LCI by reporting suspicious activity and coordinating with our inspection efforts, we can take prompt action to address unsafe living conditions.”

Xu did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.

"2 Metal Spring Mattresses Were Found"

So. What exactly did Reyes find in his investigation of the Jan. 31 fire at 126 Sheffield?

While the fire department’s report concludes that the cause of the fire is ​“undetermined,” Reyes’ investigation does identify two possible sources for the blaze, which started in the basement.

One possible ignition source was a ​“cigarette end” found on a part of the basement floor near a consequential pattern of burn marks on a wood panel wall surrounding an oil tank. The fire appears to have ​“spread up from around the floor level on that side of the area of origin” where the cigarette end was found, Reyes wrote.

Another possible ignition source, in that same area of the basement, was ​“mixed wiring” in a nearby ​“junction box.” That mixed wiring included ​“Knob and Tube” wiring combined with a ​“BX (armored cable) wire.” Reyes wrote that that ​“old electrical wiring system,” when connected to modern wiring ​“without proper grounding can cause dangerous connections increasing the risk of electrical fires.”

Reyes wrote that he could not determine if the damage to the inside of the open junction box was a cause or a result of the fire. Therefore, he could not ​“definitively rule out the wiring as the ignition source to the fire.”

Regardless of whether the cigarette or the mixed wiring in the basement caused the fire, Reyes was clear on what served as a vehicle for the spreading of the fire: a ​“mattress lying on the floor space between the two walls in the area of origin.”

That mattress, he said, ​“played a key role in the fire spread and damage which was found during the investigation. The mattress acted as a bridge by which the fire was able to communicate from one wall to the other.” 

Reyes quotes one tenant, Bruton, as saying that he had seen people leave the basement multiple times, and thought they might be staying down there. In a follow-up interview with the Independent, Bruton said that he was misquoted in the report — he did not say people had been coming and going from the basement, and he does not think people were staying down there. Instead, he said, he saw the door to the basement open on the day of the fire, and wondered how that had happened. 

“Two competent ignition sources found in the area of origin means two possibilities for how fire could have spread to cause the damage found,” Reyes wrote in the fire investigation report.

“If the fire began in the junction box in the area of origin, an electrical fire that melted the wire connector in the junction box above the mattress could have dropped down and fell onto the mattress and ignited the covering. The resulting fire on the mattress would have grown and caused the fire to light the wall underneath the main carrying beam and spread vertically. The fire could have simultaneously move[d] across the mattress and ignited something on the floor then spread to the opposite wall.”

If the fire started with the cigarette, he said, then perhaps the cigarette lit something on fire, spreading the blaze to the mattress, which then sent the fire up the wall.

Having found ​“at least two possible logical outcomes to the cause of the fire,” Reyes concluded, he determined that the area of origin of the fire was a part of the basement ​“between the wall under the main carrying beam and the wall that surrounded the oil tank.”

And, ​“as a result of not being able to rule out all but one competent ignition source as the cause of the fire and based on the information gathered and the evidence available on the scene at the time of this investigation, I have deemed that the nature of the fire was UNDETERMINED.”

2 Months Later, Displaced Tenants Rebuild

The five former 126 Sheffield tenants the Independent spoke with — Anthony Bruton, Tony Edwards, Diane Chatman, Luis Chevalier, and Ingred Sanchez — all said they had never seen anyone sleeping in the basement. They didn’t think anyone was staying down there, though Sanchez said she had heard rumor that a squatter had gotten in. Sanchez said she thinks the mattress in the basement was just furniture left behind by a previous tenant, as opposed to an indication of a place where someone was regularly sleeping. Bruton said he had never seen a mattress in the basement his whole time living there.

All five tenants said they were renting individual rooms on various floors of 126 Sheffield. Edwards said he had been paying $725 a month; Chevalier and Sanchez said their monthly rent was nearly $1,000. After the fire, they spent some time living out of the motels on the far west side of town with help from the Red Cross and LCI.

These nearly two months later, all five said they’re still working on coming to terms with the traumatic event that was the Jan. 31 fire. They all lost clothing and other personal belongings. Fortunately, none of them were physically hurt.

Edwards said he’s still living in a Dixwell Avenue homeless shelter as he tries to find a permanent place to live. Chatman said she’s in an apartment at another Xu-owned property, which she’s grateful for. Chevalier and Sanchez said they managed to get an apartment at Bella Vista, which they described as a peaceful place to land after a year at 126 Sheffield.

Edwards, who said he had to leave 56 Avon St. in November 2023 after a fire there as well, wasn’t the only 126 Sheffield tenants to say he had previously been displaced from a different Xu-owned property.

Sanchez said she had previously lived in a formerly Xu-owned property at 84 Henry St. That apartment building was ​“overtaken by squatters,” she said. There ​“30 squatters in one apartment in the first floor.” She said she was the only one paying rent, $850 for a single bedroom. (Click here to read a story in which Xu’s property manager, David Kone, described how ​“professional squatters” temporarily took over 84 Henry ​“and started renting spaces out for crack.”)

Sanchez said the landlord subsequently moved her from 84 Henry to 126 Sheffield. ​“I’m glad he moved us when he did,” she said — even though she’d later be displaced by the Jan. 31 fire.

“I haven’t the faintest idea” what caused the 126 Sheffield fire, Edwards said. But, given how many fires have taken place at one landlord’s properties in recent years, ​“it’s pretty damn suspicious.”