EDISON — The Edison school custodian accused of tossing a cigarette into a trash can, starting a fire that burned down the James Monroe Elementary School, said he is devastated by what happened.

“I want people to know that I love their kids,” said Jerome C. Higgins, his eyes welling up with tears. “There was nothing that could be worse in my life than for me to displace 500 children and inconvenience and hurt their families.”

Higgins, 48, who has worked for the Edison School System for 24 years, has been charged with a petty disorderly persons offense for smoking inside the school.

Middlesex County acting Prosecutor Andrew C. Carey said investigators believe Higgins, of East Brunswick, tossed an unfinished portion of a cigarette into a trash can inside the school before he left the building sometime Saturday. According to Carey, the contents of the trash can, located in a custodian’s office, caught fire and the blaze spread throughout the building at about 7:45 p.m.

The inferno consumed the 50-year-old building that held 450 students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Interviewed at his home, Higgins, who grew up in Edison, said he has not slept since the fire.

“I was vigorously honest with the police and the prosecutors office,” he said, his blue eyes bloodshot. “This is horrible.”

Frank Imbriacco, an Edison Fire Department battalion chief, said when firefighters arrived about 8 p.m., the school was already engulfed in flames, concentrated at the center of the building, near the library and school offices.

There were no sprinklers in the building because sprinklers were not mandated when the school was built in 1963-64, said The chief said firefighters entered the building with hoses and tried to put out the fire, but were pushed back by a wall of flames and smoke. They backed out of the building and then took up “defensive positions,” pouring water onto the flames from outside.

The school’s students and staff will not return to school until Wednesday when they will be placed in temporary quarters at Middlesex County College in Edison until more permanent facilities can be found.

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