Alleged firebomber faces life in prison

A firebomb was thrown through the front window of Bejai Rai’s home, at 658 Glafil St. in Elmont, on New Year’s Day.

Christina Daly/Herald

A Queens man was arrested on Jan. 2 for hurling glass bottles filled with flaming gasoline at four locations in Queens and at the home of his brother-in-law in Elmont on New Year’s Day, according to the New York City Police Department.

Ray Lazier Lengend, 40, of Queens Village, was arrested after detectives caught on camera the stolen silver Buick Regal he was driving at two of the locations he attacked, police said. The vehicle was stolen from a rental car facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to police.

On Jan. 1, officers from Nassau County’s 5th Precinct were called to the Glafil Street home of Bejai Rai, 77, Lengend’s brother-in-law, after Rai and his family heard a loud noise and the sound of glass breaking at around 9:40 p.m. Rai, his wife and two sons were at home at the time of the incident, and when Rai went to investigate, police said, he saw that the living room window was broken and then went outside, where he smelled gasoline and saw a broken bottle on the front porch.

The incident was linked to four similar ones earlier that day, which were described by Kevin Ryan, a spokesman for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, as “firebombings.” No injuries were reported in any of the attacks, Ryan said.

According to police, after filling five bottles with gasoline at gas stations near the intersections of Hillside Avenue and the Van Wyck Expressway, and Atlantic Avenue and the Van Wyck service road, Lengend fashioned them into gasoline bombs, or Molotov cocktails, drove to a delicatessen on 179th Street in Queens and threw one of the flaming bottles at the building.

Later that evening, police said, he threw firebombs at a residence in Jamaica, at a Hindu temple inside a Jamaica home and at the Al-Khoei Benevolent Association, a mosque at 89-89 Van Wyck Expressway, where worshipers were gathered. He then drove to Rai’s residence in Elmont and threw a bomb at a first-floor window.

Police said that the attacks took place between 8 p.m. and 10:15 p.m.