New Year’s Day turned tragic on Staten Island after a 7-year-old girl was killed in a house fire, police and fire officials said.
The blaze erupted shortly after 5:30 p.m. inside a two-story home at 110 Brookside Avenue in the Castleton Corners neighborhood.
Video taken at the scene shows firefighters crawling through the second-story window of the home, decked in Christmas lights, as thick smoke billows out.
The young girl was rescued from the home and rushed to Richmond University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead an hour after the fire sparked, the NYPD said.
There were no other reported injuries, according to FDNY officials.
The fire was brought under control minutes before the young girl died in the hospital.
Neighbors told ABC7 that the New Year’s Day tragedy comes on the heels of another family death.
The girl’s grandmother, who helped raise her, passed away just before Thanksgiving.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
An e-bike sparked a massive hours-long blaze that gutted a Bronx grocery store and injured seven people — two seriously — on Sunday, officials said.
An EMS worker and a civilian were seriously hurt when flames broke out around 10:40 a.m. at the Concourse Food Plaza at 2096 Grand Concourse in the West Bronx section, officials said. Five firefighters suffered minor injuries.
The quick-moving fire was blamed on a scooter’s lithium-ion battery and rose to five alarms, requiring over 50 units and more than 200 firefighters to douse it.
Mayor Adams went to the scene and used the incident to call attention to the batteries, which have sparked a slew of recent fires in the city, some of them fatal.
“We have witnessed this over and over again, and that is why we’re going to continue to amplify the message that a simple device like this, this charred scooter, is only a symbol of what is happening behind us and what has continued to take place since early this morning,” Adams said Sunday afternoon. “We’re still fighting the fire because of the type of device the fire started from.”
Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said the bike caused “extraordinary damage.
“This entire building behind me is completely destroyed,” Kavanagh said. “The roof is caved in. There’s nothing left. And it is all because of this single bike.”
Firefighters could be seen carrying the burnt bike away from the scene.
Fires caused by e-bike batteries killed six people in the city in 2022, officials said. Those blazes were among 219 started by the batteries last year and left another 147 people injured.
The stricken former partner of slain EMT Yadira Arroyo described in Bronx court Tuesday how a routine day suddenly turned tragic when a deranged man hijacked their ambulance.
Monique Williams recalled to jurors in painful detail how she and Arroyo, a beloved 44-year-old mom of five, were driving to a call involving a pregnant woman when a passing motorist signaled to them that a man was riding on their bumper on White Plains Road about 7 p.m. March 16, 2017.
The FDNY medics pulled over to investigate, and the next thing they knew, 25-year-old suspect Jose Gonzalez had run around and hopped behind the wheel of their emergency vehicle, she said.
“I remember her screaming, ‘Oh hell, no!’ ” Williams said of Arroyo.
“I was trying to pull his hand off the steering wheel,” Williams said in the courtroom — where about 50 EMTs were in the gallery staring down Gonzalez, who was allegedly high on PCP at the time of the crime.
Gonzalez was able to kick the ambulance into gear even as he fought with the two medics, Williams said.
Another witness said the suspect then suddenly backed up the ambulance and hit a car before lurching forward into an intersection. That’s when Arroyo fell, and the emergency vehicle fatally ran her over.
Williams said she immediately noticed that she no longer heard her pal “Yadi.
“I lost sight of her,” said the former medic, who retired the day of the horror. “When we started to go forward, I felt some tumbling underneath us.”
She found Arroyo lying still on the ground.
“I ran over to her to try to get her up,” Williams said quietly. “She didn’t get up. I stayed there with her. She didn’t move no more, so I just stood there with her.”
Arroyo’s aunt, Ali Acevedo-Hernandez, later told The Post outside court that the emotional account drove her to tears.
“The thing that got to me … was when [Williams] said that she felt something tumbling under the wheels,” Acevedo-Hernandez said. “And I know it was Yadi.”
Acevedo-Hernandez — who said she had to close Arroyo’s eyes at the hospital after she died — added that she wants Gonzalez to pay for what he did.
“I see no remorse,” she said. “I don’t see any pity, I don’t see no repentance. I see nothing. I just see an empty shell of a person. He can’t even take responsibility for what he did.”
At one point during Tuesday’s trial, prosecutors displayed gruesome photo evidence of the ambulance’s blood-splattered driver’s side and smashed driver’s side headlight, prompting the crowd of EMTs there to gasp loudly.
The other witness who testified, real-estate agent Demetrius Perez, 43, said that after Arroyo was mowed down, Gonzalez got out of the ambulance and began to fight with the quickly gathering crowd.
“I remember him attempting … to throw a punch, and then the guy grabbed him and threw him to the ground,” Perez said.
Prosecutors have charged Gonzalez with first-degree manslaughter, robbery, vehicular manslaughter and operating a motor vehicle under the influence.
A surveillance video recording presented by the defense has shown Gonzalez walk up to the driver’s side door, open it and climb in. But an SUV obscured Arroyo falling out before the ambulance started to move.
Louis Montalvo, an EMT who knew Arroyo for nearly two decades, told The Post on Tuesday that “Yadi’s name needs justice.”
“The city needs justice,” Montalvo said. “Her sons need justice. Her family needs justice. We need justice. And we’re not going to stop until justice is brought. We’re going to be here every day.”
Cops charged an FDNY smoke-eater — aptly named Marty P. Party — with criminal mischief for drunkenly peeing on a Jewish dining structure known as a sukkah on the Upper East Side, police said Friday.
The 37-year-old off-duty firefighter first kicked the hut on East 92nd Street near Second Avenue in Manhattan and damaged it around 1:12 a.m. Oct. 8, according to the NYPD.
The pugnacious piddler then took a leak inside the temporary structure — used for feasting during the Jewish holiday Sukkot — before fleeing, according to police.
Party, who was also identified in records as Martin Lydon, was charged with criminal mischief, according to cops. He was issued a desk appearance ticket and released.
Images released by the NYPD of the alleged troublesome tinkler show him wearing a baseball cap backwards, a“Dirty Dancing”-themed T-shirt and carrying something in a paper bag.
Party didn’t immediately return a request for comment Friday.
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