Newsday – April 25, 2017
by Nicole Fuller and Alison Fox
Investigators on Monday continued to probe the cause of a fast-moving Queens Village house fire that left five young people dead as police released the names of those who perished. The victims of the deadly blaze were identified by police as Chayce Lipford, 2; Rashawn Matthews, 10; Jada Foxworth, 16; Melody Edwards, 17; and Destiny Dones, 20.
The victims — members of a family that all lived together in the house on 208th Street — were home when the fire was reported at 2:36 p.m. Sunday, officials said.
Four firefighters suffered minor injuries, officials said Monday.
“We don’t have all the answers that we want to have about what happened here,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a news conference at the scene on Sunday. “ . . . There are many unanswered questions and our fire marshals will get to work on that.”
Investigators on Monday had not yet announced the cause of the fire. A vehicle in the driveway of the home was also destroyed in the blaze, and officials have not yet said if the house or vehicle caught fire first.
Foxworth and Edwards were pronounced dead at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, police said. Chayce was pronounced dead at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, and Rashawn and Dones were pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
As investigators examined the home on Monday, the acrid smell of smoke hung in the air, and witnesses to the raging fire recalled the horror of seeing some members of the family trying to escape the burning home.
Benjamin Gordon, 45, who lives a couple of houses down from the fire scene, said he was coming home from church when he saw the flames. When he got closer, he said, he saw a man on the roof overhang.
“He we running back and forth on the roof,” he said, adding the man was yelling, “Help, help, help, help.”
Gordon and a friend yelled to the man that he had to jump, adding that he just kept thinking, “I gotta help this man, I gotta help him.”
“Finally he jumped and we grabbed him,” he said. “He’s like delirious.”
Gordon said he then ran around to the back of the house as the glass by the dining room on the side broke.
“I picked up a pole and I broke the back window out and the smoke hit me, boom,” he said, adding: “It was crazy, the smoke was so thick it backed me up.” The mother of his children then called him around front, saying she saw people in the attic.
“I was yelling for the kids, ‘Are you in there?’ We didn’t hear nothing,” he said. “By the time I got to the front of the house, there was no movement in the window.”
Carletta Cantres, 47, was in her house a couple of doors down, cooking dinner when she heard about the fire, she recalled on Monday.
“I grabbed my son and I came running out the front door,” she said. “I saw the flames on the second floor. Then I saw the gentleman come out on the roof.”
She started screaming for the neighbors to come out of their house next door.
“I saw…[the people] in the attic window — I said you ‘can’t jump, you can’t jump?’ ” she said, but they didn’t answer her.
She said they looked like they could have been pinned against the window.
“It was just scary that they couldn’t get out,” she added. “It’s horrific, it’s a sad day.”
Mourners also stopped by the scene and shared memories of those who died.
And the beginnings of a memorial appeared: White balloons were tethered to a fence, and white and yellow flowers were placed in front of the home.
Natasha Khan, 15, said she was classmates and friends with Foxworth. Khan said she found out that Foxworth died when she was at school, where the two were on the same cheer team at the Young Women’s Leadership School, and came right to the house.
“It’s so hard, I didn’t expect this,” Khan said, speaking through heavy tears. “It’s devastating. I had to come.”
Khan said Foxworth had just returned from a nationals competition in Florida.
“She was a good person,” she said, adding she loved cheerleading: “That was her life, she was dedicated to it. Half of my school is devastated, the whole cheer team.
“I’ve only known her for a year but it feels like we were so close,” she added. “Our friendship was everything to me.”
The fire represented the worst loss of life in a single blaze since a house fire in the Midwood area of Brooklyn killed seven children in March 2015.
“This is a terrible time for this block, for this community, for our entire city, when we see people lost in such a fashion,” FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said at the news conference.
Thirty-nine FDNY units and 168 personnel fought Sunday’s blaze before it was declared under control at 4:25 p.m., officials said.
“We received a call from a passing motorist who saw fire on the first and second floor of this home and saw someone come to the window and tumble out from that window out onto the setback and onto the lawn,” Nigro said.
A law enforcement source said the 46-year-old man was taken to Queens Hospital Center to be treated for smoke inhalation and a cut to his hands.
He was later identified as Maurice Matthews, the grandfather of the 2-year-old and the father of the 10-year-old, a law enforcement official said.
Firefighters arrived four minutes after getting the call and “were met by a house completely consumed by fire,” he said, adding that the crew saw the blaze had spread to the house next door and immediately called a second alarm, Nigro said.
“They valiantly pushed in behind the hose lines,” he said. “Unfortunately, they recovered all the people from there. None of the five people in the home survived.”
Nigro said the fire took an emotional toll on many who battled the blaze, some still saddened by the death last week of firefighter William Tolley of Bethpage, who fell five stories from a roof while fighting another fire in Queens.
“Most of our firefighters have families of their own, so I’m sure this is difficult for them,” Nigro said. “It always is.”
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