NY Daily News – July 07, 2015
by Edgar Sandoval, Tina Moore
Onlookers trying to save a man trapped on the third floor of a blazing Brooklyn building Monday dragged what they thought was a mattress under the window so he could jump to safety.
They urged the father of three to make the leap, but the mattress tragically turned out to be a box spring made of wood and metal — and it was unable to cushion what became a fatal plunge.
Tony Celestin, 59, was severely injured in the fire that broke out just before 2 a.m. in Flatbush.
“The police said he had third-degree burns,” Manushka Celestin, 26, said of her dad. “But it was the jump that killed him.”
Ricardo Arturo Lopez, 28, said he and another man pulled the box spring out of the trash and put it under the window, believing it would help Celestin. He said he was shocked at the extent of the man’s injuries.
“The guy (Celestin) landed on a mattress that me and another guy had pulled up from the garbage,” he said. “He jumped out, but he landed on the side. I wish I could have done more to help them out, grab more stuff to make it fuller.”
In the video, firefighters try to drag the box spring with Celestin on it away from the building as they await an ambulance.
At one point, a firefighter placed a cloth over a deep gash on Celestin’s arm.
“He was burned badly, too,” said neighbor Charles Andre, 40. “I felt bad for the guy.”
Five people were hospitalized after flames tore through the building at 2126 Nostrand Ave., fire officials said.
In his last moments, Celestin proved himself a hero.
Jean Maurice, 56, who also lived in the apartment, said Celestin woke him and alerted him to the flames.
“He shook me,” Maurice said. “He told me, ‘Wake up! There’s a fire!’”
“I go to the window, people are telling me to jump,” he said.
Maurice jumped onto the awning of an adjacent Golden Krust restaurant and wasn’t seriously hurt. The other victims’ injuries were also minor, fire officials said.
Celestin was a Haitian immigrant who sold flowers for 15 years, his oldest daughter said. He also had a 25-year-old son and a 23-year-old daughter.
“To me, he’s a hero. He’s this area’s Superman,” said Manushka Celestin .
“Instead of trying to save himself, he went to the back to wake everyone else up,” the daughter told the Daily News. “He could have gotten out first.”
The cause of the blaze was under investigation late Monday.
Before Celestin’s fatal leap, the last fire death recorded in the city was May 24. A woman died in a cooking-related fire three weeks after a Staten Island blaze on May 1. The FDNY recorded no fire deaths in June, the first month without a fatality in the 150-year history of the department.
With Rocco Parascandola
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