Security Guard Charged With Setting Fire At Macy’s Meadowlands Thanksgiving Parade Studio
Moonachie NJ April 23 2022
A security guard was charged with deliberately setting a fire at the building in the Meadowlands where the balloons and floats for the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade are designed, constructed and stored.
Mathew Awojobi, 63, of Newark was arrested in connection with the brush fire set outside the Macy’s Parade Studio in Moonachie, which broke out shortly before 7 p.m. Monday, April 18, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella .
Moonachie firefighters doused the suspicious blaze on State Street off Moonachie Road.
Detectives reviewed area security video as part of an investigation by Musella’s Major Crimes Unit and Moonachie police that led to Awojobi’s arrest on Tuesday, the prosecutor said.
The former Brooklyn resident — an Americanized native of Abeokuta, Nigeria — remained held Wednesday in the Bergen County Jail pending a first appearance in Central Judicial Processing Court.
He’s charged with aggravated arson, as well as failing to report a fire and causing or risking death, bodily injury or widespread damage.
Artists, welders, carpenters, “balloonatics” and more work in the nearly 72,000-square-foot building built specifically for the Macy’s Parade crew and staff.
The building has 44-foot-high ceilings where the parade’s signature inflatable balloons can be tested and created.
It also has a five-ton overhead crane and a massive costume- and set-making and restoration operation — as well as several exterior and interior security cameras.
The headquarters had been at 15th Street and Willow Avenue in Hoboken for 40 years before outgrowing the space there. The operation moved to Moonachie more than a decade ago.
