Friends and family said goodbye Saturday to four of the victims who died in a devastating fire in Queens last month. .
Two-year-old Chayse Lipford, 10-year-old Rayshawn Matthews, 16-year-old Jada Foxworth and 20-year-old Destiny Dones — all members of the same extended family — will be laid to rest as part of one service.
A wake was scheduled for 9 a.m. and the funeral was 11 a.m. The Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, was expected to speak.
A GoFundMe page also was set up to help raise money for the families.Investigators continue to investigate the April 23 Queens Village fire in an effort to determine what sparked the fast-moving house blaze. Fire marshals determined that there were no working smoke detectors in the home.
They say that the cause is not considered suspicious, and it is believed to have started on the first floor of 112-16 208th Street. It spread to an adjacent home that was damaged, but no one was home at the time.
The fire claimed the lives of the five victims, while a sixth person, identified by relatives as 46-year-old Maurice Matthews, was able to escape out a second-floor window and was taken to New York Hospital Center of Queens in satisfactory condition. He is reportedly Rayshawn’s father and Chayse’s grandfather.
The fire was the deadliest in the city since March 2015, when a house fire in Brooklyn killed seven children, all siblings. That fire was touched off by a hot plate.
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