Home of Gay Man and Two Trans Women Destroyed in Possible Arson Attack

A potential arson attack in London has left two transgender women and one gay man homeless. The fire in the Whitechapel section of East London on Friday, April 14, closed a major road and destroyed the trio’s top-floor flat.

The Metropolitan Police has labeled the fire as “suspicious” and a local transgender model and writer posted that the fire was a targeted attack on the LGBTQ+ community and asked police to investigate the incident as a hate crime.

“Four fire engines and around 25 firefighters tackled a fire at a block of flats on High Street in Whitechapel this morning,” a spokesperson for the London Fire Brigade said in a statement. “A stairwell running from the fourth floor to the fifth floor of the six-story building was destroyed by fire. There are no reports of injuries at this time.”

According to a GoFundMe page set up to aid the victims, the flat was occupied by two trans women and a gay man identified only as Novaya, Bart, and Harper. The fire began around 6 a.m. and could have proven fatal if it had happened any earlier.

“If Novaya had not been awake to hear an explosion from her window at the other end of the flat, the outcome would have been fatal,” the GoFundMe page revealed. “None of the buildings nor internal flats fire alarms sounded, leaving all inside entirely unaware of any fire whilst Bart & Harper slept. If the fire brigade had arrived 5 minutes later the fire door would have entirely burnt through, resulting in all three people within the property to be exposed directly to the fire.”

Transgender model and writer Munro Bergdorf linked the GoFundMe page in a post to Instagram and asked for the public’s help for Novaya, Bart, and Harper.

“If Novaya hadn’t been awake it could have been fatal,” Bergdorf wrote in her post. “This ongoing environment of transphobic hate perpetuated by the UK government and media is putting lives on the line.”

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said the fire was “being treated as suspicious” although there was no word whether the fire will be investigated as a hate crime.