CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A suburban Detroit business owner who caught fire and explodedwho killed a man, was arrested at a New York airport as he prepared to leave for Hong Kong on a one-way ticket, authorities said Friday.

U.S. Customs and New York Port Authority personnel arrested Noor Noel Kestou, 31, on Saturday at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was brought back to Michigan on Wednesday.

Kestou, of the municipality of Commerce, It was prosecuted Thursday on a charge of involuntary manslaughter.

The March 4 fire and explosion occurred at a Clinton Township building that housed a distributor for the vaping industry called Goo. More than 100,000 vaporizers were stored at the site. Authorities have said a truck full of butane canisters had arrived at the building a week after the explosion, which sent the canisters flying up to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers), and more than half of that stock was still there. there when the fire started.

Turner Lee Salter, 19, was about a quarter mile away when he was struck by a canister of nitrous oxide that was propelled into the air by the explosion. Salter later died.

Authorities said they were given information on April 20 that Kestou was trying to fly to Hong Kong.

“We don’t know what their ultimate goal was,” Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido told reporters Friday. “Was it to stay out of the country with a wife and child here? “No one has a crystal ball to determine who is a flight risk.”

“He was suspicious from the beginning, being the owner of this business,” Lucido added. “Anyone who owns a business and something like this happens to them should be considered a suspect.”

Goo had received an occupancy permit from the township in September 2022 for the 26,700-square-foot (2,480-square-meter) building as retail space for a “smoke/vape shop” that would sell paraphernalia for vaping products, according to the Department of Buildings. of Clinton Township. he has said.

Kestou has been released after posting $500,000 bail. Lucido said authorities have his passport and that a condition of his bail is that Kestou must wear a GPS strap. A probable cause hearing is scheduled for May 7 in Clinton Township District Court.

Kestou’s attorney, James Thomas, said Thursday he had no comment on the case.