BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Public Enemy No. 1. City police are hunting down a man they say barricaded two people in a room and lit it on fire. Now a 61-year-old woman is dead in the first murder of the year.

Meghan McCorkell has more on the search for her killer.

It’s a crime the police commissioner calls unspeakable–a woman locked in a burning home and left to die.

“Brutal, ruthless, vicious, merciless, sadistic and cruel,” said Commissioner Kevin Davis, Baltimore City Police Department.

That is how police describe Public Enemy No. 1 — 59-year-old Alan Lorenzo Floyd.

Investigators say Floyd was inside an East Baltimore rowhome on Madison Street on New Year’s Day. He locked two people inside a room, including a 61-year-old woman, then lit the house on fire.

“Two people were actually in a room and were barricaded behind a door that he had doused with some type of accelerant and he set fire to that,” said T.J. Smith, Baltimore City Police Department.

Neighbors frantically tried to save the people who were trapped. One managed to make it out alive. Firefighters weren’t able to save the other woman.

Investigators believe Floyd had an ongoing dispute with someone at that house, but the woman who died was not who he was targeting.

“He tried to kill someone today, and he killed someone else,” said Smith.

Investigators say Alan Floyd has had prior run-ins with police, and they want the community to step up and turn him in.

The commissioner has a message for Floyd:

“We will make sure everyone knows exactly who you are and exactly what you did, not only to the victim, but to this city,” Commissioner Davis said.

And they will hunt him down to hold him accountable.

Police have not yet identified the woman who died.

WJZ has learned that Alan Floyd has a criminal record, with charges including theft, drug possession and weapons charges.