by C.J. Sullivan and Max Jaeger
A 9-year-old Staten Island boy tried to drag his doomed father out of a house fire while frantically shouting, “My dad can’t die! Please, God, help my daddy!’’ heartbroken neighbors said Sunday.
“My window was opened, and I heard [the boy] yelling. I thought it was late for him to be outside playing. Then I heard him yell, ‘Help my father! . . . Help me! . . . He’s gonna die!’ ” shaken neighbor Luba Sherr said of Tony Carter Jr., who was covered in soot and wearing only socks, shorts and a T-shirt as he begged neighbors for help.
The boy cried that his hands were hot and burned, said Sherr, 57.
“He wanted to save his dad. He really loved his father. He was too little to get his dad out,’’ she said.
The inferno erupted at 59 Pembrook Loop in Rossville just before 11 p.m. Saturday, killing Tony’s dad, college professor Anthony Carter, on the night he was celebrating his 62nd birthday.
A scented candle in the back of the house sparked the blaze, neighbors said.
The father and son were inseparable, according to family and neighbors.
“His father was everything to him,’’ Sherr said. “He took him to school. Played with him outside all the time. They really loved each other.”
As the fire tore through the family’s home, Sherr led the boy down the street to wait for an ambulance while neighbors tried in vain to combat the flames with a garden hose.
“We grabbed a hose, but it didn’t help,” said one resident, who gave his name only as Frank.
Tony was treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation at Staten Island North Hospital and is in “OK condition,” relatives said. His mother arrived shortly after he was taken away, and she then rushed to the hospital, Sherr said. Tony’s older brothers, Walter and Calvin, remembered their father as a man who rose from humble beginnings to touch the lives of thousands.
“He was an inspiration to so many,” Calvin, 29, told The Post.
Anthony turned down jobs on Wall Street for the humble work of teaching — first at Wagner College and then later at Columbia University and finally the University of New Haven in Connecticut.
When he wasn’t teaching business students, he volunteered in low-income-area Connecticut schools, according to Calvin.
“His mission in all that was to inspire people to try to live up to their full potential,” the son said.
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