A fire that turned a crowded Long Island apartment house into an exitless inferno, killing a mother and three of her children, was set deliberately by a teenage volunteer firefighter with a hero complex, police said.

Caleb Lacey, 19, the son of an evangelical pastor and a neighbor of the victims, was arraigned Saturday on a charge of arson and four counts of second-degree murder. He was ordered held without bail.

Police described the Feb. 19 fire (reported HERE on YWN) in dwellings above a Lawrence coin laundry as a staged rescue attempt gone awry.

They said Lacey poured gasoline into the building’s staircase, lit it, then went back to the headquarters of the Lawrence-Cedarhurst Volunteer Fire Department and waited.

When the call came in, Lacey “was one of the first responders on the fire truck” said Nassau County homicide detective Lt. John Azzata.

“The suspected motive is what arson experts call ‘hero’ or ‘vanity’ — to be the savior and appear to have saved individuals,” he said.

Whatever rescue the high school student may have planned, however, didn’t happen in time, police said.

Flames raged up the building’s only staircase, blocking the main escape route.

Morena Vanegas, 46, died along with her daughters Susanna and Andrea Vanegas, ages 9 and 13, and her 19-year-old son, Saul Presa.

Other relatives leaped to safety through windows as flames engulfed the building, including two more of Vanegas’ children, ages 9 and 12, and their 42-year-old father, Edit Vanegas.

“I don’t have a word for this. I lost my family,” he told reporters, his voice choked with tears, outside the courthouse Saturday.

Four people in an adjoining apartment — a husband, wife and two children — also escaped through a window. The flames damaged a neighboring building, displacing about 20 people.

The fire started just doors down the street from a Church, where Lacey’s father is a pastor. The family lives on the same block.

The pastor’s son was arrested Friday evening following a monthlong investigation. He was being held pending his next hearing at a district court in Hempstead, at a date to be determined. Police did not immediately know whether he had a lawyer.

The Long Island newspaper Newsday reported that at the arraignment, a prosecutor said Lacey made a videotaped statement in which he admitted setting the fire and said he knew people were inside the building at the time.

The Lawrence-Cedarhurst Fire Department issued a written statement saying Lacey, who had been a probationary member of the department since May of 2008, had been suspended. Police said the suspension came after the fire, but was for an unrelated incident. Authorities did not reveal the reason.

The statement from fire officials said that when the teen joined the department, his background check had come up clean.

The department also expressed sympathy to the victims and noted that “many of our volunteers risked their lives in an effort to save those who lost their lives.”

Hempstead Town officials had issued summonses to the building’s owners for removing a fire escape without a permit, and nine other town code violations.

(Source: Associated Press)