North Philly homeowner Al-Ashraf Khalil convicted of arson fire that killed Lt. Sean Williamson

A Fairhill homeowner faces the potential of life in prison after a federal jury found him guilty Thursday of a 2022 arson that killed a Philadelphia Fire Department lieutenant and injured five others.

The panel of six men and six women concluded that Al-Ashraf Khalil, 30, conspired to set fire to the building he owned at 300 W. Indiana Ave., hoping to collect on the nearly $500,000 insurance policy dollars. The structure collapsed after the fire was extinguished, burying Lt. Sean Williamson, a 27-year veteran of the department, — under the rubble.

Williamson, 51, died, unable to breathe. Four other firefighters and an inspector from the Department of Licensing and Inspections survived with injuries.

Jurors convicted Khalil on Thursday of charges including conspiracy, arson and wire fraud and also found his co-defendant, Isaac Jaghama30 years, guilty of helping to light the fire.

The decision has come after an eight-day trial in which Khalil’s attorney tried to convince jurors that while the landlord may have set fire to his building, the negligence of firefighters ultimately caused Williamson’s death.

Incident commanders at the scene should have known better than to send the lieutenant and others into the 100-year-old structure minutes after it was damaged by fire and hundreds of gallons of water used by firefighters to to put out the conflagration, defense attorney Gerald A. Stein argued Wednesday during his closing argument.

“There was an intermediate cause of death and injury above and beyond Mr Khalil’s control – the failure to properly supervise the men at that front and give them a fair chance to do their job and get out safely ,” Stein said during the closing. arguments on Wednesday.

That distinction — who bears the blame for Williamson’s death — and the jury’s rejection of Stein’s argument will prove pivotal in sentencing hearings for Khalil and Jaghama next year.

The federal arson charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and up to 20 years behind bars. But in cases where jurors conclude that the fire directly led to the death, a convicted defendant can be sentenced to life in prison.

Although the jury was not instructed on the potential punishments Khalil and Jaghama could face, prosecutors balked at Khalil’s efforts to blame the firefighters and urged jurors to hold them accountable him and Jaghama for the damage they caused.

“The defendants set fire to an occupied building in the middle of the night and they want you to blame the firefighters who showed up in the middle of the night to save their house?” Assistant US Attorney Amanda Reinitz scoffed as she addressed the jury. “None of these men would have been there if the defendants had not set fire to the building.”

Khalil, co-owner of a Juniata Park pizza restaurant, had bought the Indiana Avenue building less than a year before the fire, hoping to renovate it and turn a quick profit.

But evidence at trial showed that when he failed to sell it for the price he expected, he quickly set about burning it to the ground.

Surveillance footage showed Khalil and Jaghama, a friend he enlisted to help in the effort, entering the building’s basement just after 1:30 a.m. on June 18 and leaving moments later as flames they began to grasp it.

Khalil had rented the upper two floors of the structure to two employees of his pizzeria he had known for years, who were inside at the time with their families and young children. They managed to escape in time, but Khalil did nothing to warn them.

He returned to the scene later that night to watch firefighters battle the blaze he had set, and was on the scene when Williamson and the others entered the building just before 2:30 a.m. and then later when the building it finally collapsed.

“Yes, there were structural problems in a 100-year-old house in Philadelphia,” said Reinitz, the prosecutor. “But who knows the building better? The firemen who show up in the middle of the night to put out a fire or the guy who owns it?”

It took six days after the crash for authorities to charge and arrest Khalil — and only after he tried to flee the country for Jordan by booking two separate plane tickets in his name under US and Palestinian passports.

Jordanian officials turned him away shortly after he landed, sending him back to John F. Kennedy International Airport, where agents from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were waiting to arrest him.

But Khalil and Jaghama have remained in custody since their arrests.