An elderly Brooklyn woman and the devoted son who spent years caring for her were killed Saturday morning when a terrifying fire tore through their Flatbush apartment, leaving neighbors shaken and searching for answers.
The deadly blaze broke out early Saturday inside a second-floor apartment on Nostrand Avenue near Cortelyou Road, officials said.
Police said the victims were an 86-year-old woman and her 65-year-old son. Their names had not been officially released pending family notification, but devastated neighbors identified them as Maria and Jose, a mother and son who had been part of the neighborhood for more than 40 years.
Two other women, ages 82 and 40, were seriously injured and rushed to University Hospital at Downstate. Officials said both were expected to survive.
The fire was brought under control by 7:38 a.m., but by then, the damage had already been done.
And one neighbor says the morning turned frightening even before the smoke and flames appeared.
Edwin Savaille, 48, who lives next door and shares a wall with the apartment where the fire broke out, told The New York Post that he was jolted awake around 5:45 a.m. by loud arguing.
“It was in Spanish, so I couldn’t understand what they were saying,” Savaille said. “But you heard the loud voices for sure. So it was definitely an argument going on.”
He went back to sleep, but about 30 minutes later, he woke up again — this time to screams outside.
“I heard someone on the block screaming, ‘There’s a fire out here,’” he said.
When Savaille looked out his window, he saw a horrifying sight.
“Big flames coming out,” he recalled.
He immediately got his family and pets out of the building.
“So it’s been a crazy Saturday morning,” he said.
Savaille praised firefighters for their fast response, saying they saved two people who might not have made it out alive.
The FDNY said the cause of the fire remains under investigation. A fire marshal will determine how the blaze started.
For longtime residents, the tragedy cut deep.
Neighbors said Maria had been bedridden for nearly 20 years, and Jose had devoted his life to caring for her.
Maria had once worked as a tailor, while Jose was remembered as a familiar and beloved face in the neighborhood. Locals said he had coached a little league baseball team called the Bonnies and regularly stopped by a corner store to buy food for himself and his mother.
Jonathan Ortiz, 47, who works at the store, said Jose came in almost every day.
“He would come in every day to buy lunch for him and his mother,” Ortiz told The Post. “He’d buy soups and whatever she could eat. He took care of her.”
Ortiz said the entire neighborhood was heartbroken.
“Everyone in the neighborhood loved them,” he said. “Everybody is devastated. Everybody is sad. The whole neighborhood is down.”
The family had already endured another brutal tragedy decades earlier.
According to past reports, Maria’s other son, who owned a small clothing company and worked as a party promoter, was killed in December 1996 inside his Garment District office on West 38th Street in Manhattan.
Now, the same family is grieving again after a quiet Saturday morning turned into a nightmare.
The fatal Brooklyn fire came just one day after another devastating incident in New York City, when an explosion at a Staten Island dry dock killed at least one man, seriously injured two firefighters, and left about 30 others hurt.
Authorities were still investigating the cause of that explosion Saturday, as fire officials in Brooklyn worked to determine what sparked the blaze that killed Maria and Jose.
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