Hotel Security Guard Starts Hotel Fires in Order to Sleep on the Job

Why did a hotel security officer set hotel fires? It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, except, unfortunately for everyone involved, this was no joke.

When you hear about a former employee of two hotels starting his own hotel fires, you might assume he or she did so because of job dissatisfaction or revenge. But in the case of Mariano Barbosa, Jr., the suspect simply wanted to make his job a little bit easier. Barbosa was the security officer for both Yotel and the Soho Grand Hotel in Manhattan. He recently was arrested and charged with setting multiple hotel fires in both of these hotels dating back as far as 2009. When fire marshals began to grow suspicious of Barbosa’s inconsistent stories, they questioned Barbosa further.