NY Daily News – August 20, 2014
by Edgar Sandoval, Thomas Tracy
A teen “angel” looking forward to the start of school died when a blistering fire tore through her Hamilton Heights home, heartbroken neighbors said Tuesday. Melissa Mendez, 15, was escaping the flames with her father Monday afternoon when the two got separated in the smoke.
“Where’s Melissa?” the teen’s father Antonio Mendez Calderon, 74, screamed when he escaped the building. “She was behind me!”
“They found her on the stairs later,” said Altagracia Hernandez, 50.
The bright-eyed brunette, a student at the Manhattan Academy for Arts and Language, was a devout Catholic who regularly attended Annunciation Church, neighbors said.
She even had a role in the church’s Easter play — as an angel, they said.
“My daughter was a star but now she’s dead,” Calderon said somberly as he collected some clothes from his apartment Tuesday. “She was my everything.”
Calderon said he and his daughter were watching TV when the fire broke out.
“When I saw the fire, I told my daughter, ‘Let’s go!’” he said. “‘We’re going to get burned!’”
But his terrified daughter was too scared to follow him.
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