Investigators say there were seventeen people inside a Hempstead home when a basement fire ignited early Monday morning and killed a tenant.

Nassau police say the victim was an 81-year-old man.

Jagesly Castellon said she was the reason everyone else inside at the time, including family members, made it out alive and unharmed. She said she woke up to the smell of smoke around 5:30 a.m.

"I sleep on the second floor and I realized the smoke was coming from my floor,” Castellon told News 12. “I ran down to see if the oven was on or anything so see if that's where the smoke was coming from but I couldn't find the source. I ran back upstairs and started waking up my family and the rest of the people who live in my house."

A resident of the home told News 12 she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t see the stairs due to the intensity of the smoke.

The Nassau County Fire Marshal's Office said Hempstead Fire Department arrived within three minutes and discovered someone in the basement who did not survive.

A resident of the home said the 81-year-old victim was friendly and described him as a “nice Christian man.”

Village of Hempstead Mayor Waylyn Hobbs Jr. said the home “was operating as an illegal rental home with an absentee landlord.” Hobbs said village ordinance prohibits people from living in basement apartments.

The mayor said the basement apartment “had no means of egress.”

He said he and the Board of Trustees are looking to bring in more building inspectors to deal with similar issues.

The cause of the fire was apparently electrical, associated with a space heater plugged into power strip and then apparently plugged into an overloaded outlet, according to the Nassau fire marshal.

The Nassau County Fire Marshal's Office said there were smoke detectors inside but they did not appear to be working.