Crime & Safety

5 Novi Fire Victims Were in U.S. Illegally, Police Say

None of the victims was a U.S. citizen, the Department of Homeland Security said.

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NOVI, MI – All five victims have now been identified in a fatal fire Sunday at a home in a Novi.

Novi police said in a statement that the Department of Homeland Security has verified none of the five was a U.S. citizen.

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The victims are:

  • Pablo Alvaro Encino, 23, from Ocosingo, Chiapas, Mexico
  • Leonel Alvarado Rodriguez, 18, from Lagos De Marino, Jalisco, Mexico
  • Miguel Nunez Diaz, 23, from Las Choapas, Vera Cruz, Mexico
  • Brayan Alexis Medina Contreras, 16, from Pinos, Zacatecas, Mexico
  • Simeon Diaz Nunez, 18, from Santa Maria Chimalapa Juchitan, Oaxaca, Mexico

All five men worked at Kim’s Garden restaurant in Novi. The owner of the restaurant, also the owner of the home at 23184 Mystic Forest, located west of Novi Road, south of Ten Mile Road, permitted the men to live there, The Detroit News reported.

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The basement of the home was finished, but the fire was fed by combustible materials, including drywall and paneling. Novi Public Safety Director David Molloy told The Detrot News “there was evidence that someone smoked there.”

The official cause of the fire remains undetermined, the police department said in a statement. The origin of the fire was on a mattress in the basement of the home.

Preliminary autopsy results from the Oakland County Medical Examiner’s Office indicate the smoke and soot inhalation.

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