Police are investigating if a man who died in a Brooklyn arson fire yesterday is the one who set it — after being released from a hospital mental ward.
The 59-year-old victim was killed in the blaze and a female tenant was injured trying to escape her home, sources said.
The blaze broke out in a third-floor apartment of a building on 70th Street near 20th Avenue at 9 a.m. yesterday, police said.
Investigators believe the fire was set intentionally in two rooms in the victim’s apartment.
He has emerged as the top suspect in the inferno because he had threatened to kill himself the night before.
After the threat, which was sent in an e-mail, he had been taken into police custody Thursday.
He was taken by police to Coney Island Hospital for psychiatric evaluation, sources said.
It’s not clear why or how or why he left the hospital. A spokesman for the hospital declined to comment, citing federal health-privacy laws.