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'Suspicious' fire guts 50 Cent-owned home in Dix Hills
A raging fire that one fire official called "definitely suspicious" gutted a Dix Hills home owned by the Grammy-nominated rapper 50 Cent Friday morning, sending six people inside the house to the hospital.
An eyewitness told Newsday that among the injured, all of whom suffered smoke inhalation according to fire officials, were 50 Cent's ex-girlfriend, Shaniqua Tompkins, and their 10-year-old son, Marquise.
"She was all right," eyewitness Frank Hoyte, a Newsday employee, said, adding: "But she was angry."
He said Tompkins was standing outside the home as it burned. Two young boys, one of them Marquise, two teenage girls and "an older woman" were also standing with Tompkins, Hoyte said.
One of the first firefighters to arrive on the scene told Newsday the fire was suspicious. "I would say there is a strong -- a strong, strong -- possibility that it is suspicious," Dix Hills Fire Department Chief Larry Feld said.
Asked why he believed the fire was suspicious, Feld told Newsday: "The rapid movement of the fire. The volume of the fire . . . It was engulfed. The home was totally gutted."
The home at 2 Sandra Drive, purchased by the rapper in January 2007 for a reported $1.4 million, is one of the largest in Dix Hills -- and has been at the center of a lawsuit between 50 Cent and Tompkins. The 32-year-old rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, last month tried to evict Tompkins and their son from the home unless she paid him $4,500 a month in rent.
In turn, Tompkins filed a lawsuit against Jackson in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, claiming "breach of contract" and charging that the rapper had promised to put all or part of the house in her name.
Contacted early Friday, the attorney representing Tompkins, Paul Catsandonis, said he had not heard about the fire -- and would not confirm if Tompkins and her son still lived in the home or had moved.
"I can't comment right now," Catsandonis told Newsday.
An attorney for 50 Cent could not be reached for comment early on Friday.
The fire was reported at 5 a.m., according to Suffolk County Police and fire officials.
Firefighters from Dix Hills, Deer Park, Greenlawn, Commack and Melville responded to the blaze. The fire chief, Feld, told Newsday that all six people from inside the home were transported to Huntington Hospital by volunteers from the Commack and Huntington ambulance corps.
Police and fire officials also told Newsday that investigators from the Suffolk County Arson Squad and the Suffolk Fire Marshal's office are at the fire scene, investigating the cause of the blaze.
"The fire was huge, I mean huge," next-door neighbor Debra Lotz said. "I watched the whole fire from our pool . . . It burned down to the ground."
The fire caused officials to close down nearby Route 231 at Vanderbilt Parkway.
In April, Katsandonis told Newsday that Tompkins and her son had until May 1 to live in the house. He said that the rapper had said "if we give him one month's rent, he will allow them to stay until the end of the school year."
The home is located on one acre and has six bedrooms, five baths, a heated four-car garage and a pool. Last month, Katsandonis told Newsday that the rapper, who was shot outside his grandmother's Queens home in 2000, told Tompkins he wanted her and their son in a safe and secure location.
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