NEW YORK — The man killed in a blaze at New York City’s Trump Tower was an art collector who spent time with Andy Warhol, but fell on hard financial times in recent years and went through bankruptcy proceedings. Todd Brassner, 67, died on Saturday at a hospital after a fire tore through his 50th-floor apartment in the high-rise, which was constructed at a time when building codes did not require the residential section to have sprinklers.
The city’s Department of Buildings said Sunday the building did have working hard-wired smoke detectors, and that the fire department was first notified of the blaze by the detectors in the building’s heating and ventilation system. A cause had not yet been determined.