College Freshman Charged In Dorm Fire, Banned From Hoboken Campus

HOBOKEN, NJ — An 18-year-old former freshman at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken pleaded guilty on Thursday to a count of criminal mischief in connection with a fire that started in the basement of a freshman dorm on Nov. 26, prosecutors said.

Thomas Apostolico, 18, of Toms River agreed to pay $7,665 in restitution for damage to the dorm, according to The Hudson County Prosecutor's Office, and he is not permitted to return to campus or make contact with any school officials.

Sentencing has been scheduled for March 25.

Prosecutors said that shortly after 6 a.m. on that November day, the Stevens Institute of Technology Police Department and Hoboken Fire Department responded to an alarm at the Humphrey Hall dorm. They found an active fire in a garbage can outside the basement laundry room, along with "heavy smoke conditions." An officer used a fire extinguisher to put out the blaze.

All 150 residents of the dorm were evacuated and one Stevens police officer was treated and released from St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston for breathing discomfort.

The prosecutor's office said that it determined that Apostolico had "set fire to a dryer sheet and then threw it into the garbage can where he had previously discarded fireworks causing the fire."

In January of 2000, three students died in a freshman dorm at Seton Hall University after two students set a fire in a dorm lounge as a prank. Those two students were sentenced to five years in prison.

The Stevens Institute of Technology, a university with a focus on engineering, sits on a bluff in Hoboken overlooking the Hudson River. It has 3,659 undergraduates and 3,624 graduate students. The average SAT score is 1340-1500.