626 ווייט-העליש פייער-6 טויטע גוים

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Fire horror in Brooklyn
By TONY SCLAFANI and LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Saturday, May 22nd, 2004

A Brooklyn couple and two of their grandchildren were killed last night when fire trapped them in their apartment, authorities said. Five other people in the Williamsburg home were injured - two critically.
"I was on the street making a phone call when I heard the screams and saw the smoke," said family friend Rhonda Newell. "I could see the kids sticking their hands out through the window guards. They were alive and calling for help."

Upstairs neighbor Freddy Acevedo, 36, said he could hear "a little girl screaming 'Help me, grandma! Help me, grandma!' "

Family members identified the dead as Joe Newton, 67, his wife, Murlene, 60, their 6-month-old grandson, Dayshon, and 9-year-old granddaughter, Weda.

Officials said the fire erupted at 8:20 p.m. in the Newtons' sixth-floor apartment in the Taylor Wythe Houses at 626 Wythe Place.

Newell said she and an off-duty cop, Enrique Rodriguez, ran up to the sixth floor and began banging on doors to warn people to get out. There was no response at the Newton apartment, so Rodriguez kicked the locked door open, Newell said. Just as he was about to enter, firefighters arrived.

Fire officials said it appeared the blaze started in a living room couch.

"They made a decision to go into the bedrooms," said Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Callan. "Why they did that exactly is under investigation. Fire officials said the blaze, which was extinguished in just five minutes, didn't appear suspicious.

The mother of the dead children, the Newtons' daughter Diana Williams, 32, was in critical condition. Her 14-year-old mentally disabled daughter, Ivory, was also in critical condition, and her fourth child, Victoria, 10 was missing, family members said.

Diana's sister Aleisha, 17, who is six months pregnant, was rescued by firefighters who took her out a front window and down a ladder.

"She was nervous and crying for her grandmother as she came down," said a 17-year-old girl named Denise, who identified herself as Aleisha's friend.

"I wanted her to get down quick because she was coughing and I was scared for her and the baby," she said. Doctors at Woodhull Hospital said Aleisha was in stable condition.

An unidentified 6-year-old girl and a 56-year-old woman also were hospitalized in stable condition.

One firefighter was hurt, suffering minor neck and back injuries, officials said.

Glennie Nitti, 62, described her younger sister Murlene "as a beautiful woman and a pillar of the community" who with her husband helped many people through the years.

"They adopted four children, and she was a foster mother for more than 30 years," Nitti said. "They took babies who were abandoned and cared for them."

She said her brother-in-law Joe, a retired metalworker, "was a father to everybody" who was on the building's tenant patrol.

Neighbor Yolanda Hayden, 38, said the Newtons belonged to a Baptist church in Bushwick.

"It is just so, so sad," she said. "I still don't believe it."

B'KLYN FAMILY LOSES 4 IN FIRE

By CHRIS BUNTING, HASANI GITTENS and ZACH HABERMAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Email Archives
Print Reprint



May 22, 2004 -- Four members of a Brooklyn family, including a 7-month-old boy and 10-year-old girl, were killed last night after a horrific fire swept through their sixth-floor apartment, cops and fire officials said.
The blaze broke out inside 626 Wythe Place in Williamsburg just before 8:30 p.m., leaving the seven people inside the home trying frantically to elude the engulfing smoke and flames, officials said.

"This is a tragedy," said a police source. "I don't know how this family is going to deal with this."

It was unclear what sparked the fatal blaze, which started in the living room couch, then quickly ravaged the rest of the room and surrounding bedrooms.

"There's a good chance they made a decision to go into the bedroom and had trouble closing the door," said FDNY Assistant Chief Joseph Callahan.

"You heard the kids screaming 'Help us! We can't breathe!' " said neighbor Michelle Cerrano. "It was scary."

"I saw the smoke and I heard them all screaming 'Call the Fire Department!' " said eyewitness, Deziree Ashby, 19. "It was just black smoke coming out of all of the windows."



The Fire Department and the NYPD offered varying preliminary accounts of the number of people hurt, but both agreed four people perished in the fire.

Murlene Williams Newton, 60, and her husband Joe Newton, 67 died at Woodhull Hospital along with 7-month-old Treshawn Williams and 10-year-old Victoria Williams, according to police sources.

"She was an excellent human being," said Newton's grief-stricken niece, Jackie Williams as she stood outside Woodhull with 15 furiously sobbing family members. "She was remarkable, very outgoing."

The family matriarch was described as a church-going grandmother of 15 children who devoted much of her energy maintaining the Two Light Ministry on St. John's Place.

"She was the most kind and gentle person I knew," said her devastated brother Ellis Williams. "She was a pillar of the community."

An unidentified 37-year-old woman was clinging to life at Woodhull, while an 8-year-old girl caught in the blaze was in critical condition at Brooklyn Hospital, cops said.

Nisha Newton, 17, who is seven-months pregnant, was dramatically pulled from the blaze by firefighters who used a ladder to get the girl out of the apartment through the window. Her family said she is "doing OK."




Home

NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and NEWYORKPOST.COM
are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.
Copyright 2003 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 22, 2004
Apartment Fire Leaves 4 Dead in Brooklyn
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and JESS WISLOSKI

fire tore through an apartment in Brooklyn last night, killing a 10-year-old girl, a 7-month-old boy and their grandparents, both in their 60's, fire officials said. At least three other people in the apartment were injured, one critically.

The fire broke out on the sixth floor of an 11-story building at 626 Wythe Place, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Williamsburg, fire officials said. The fire appeared to have begun near a couch in the living room, Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Callan said at the building. Investigators said later the fire did not appear suspicious.

Family friends identified the girl as Victoria Williams and the two adults as Joseph Newton and Murlene Newton. The three and the baby boy were pronounced dead at Woodhull Hospital.

At least three other people were injured. They were Diane Williams, the Newtons' daughter; Ms. Williams' 14-year-old daughter, Ivory; and Anisha Newton, 17, a granddaughter of the Newtons who is seven months pregnant. Ms. Williams was in critical condition at Woodhull early this morning.

Witnesses described a scene of panic in the sixth-floor bedroom. "They were yelling to me out the window, 'We're still alive, We're still alive,' " said Rhonda Newall, who said her mother had grown up with Mrs. Newton.

The fire burned intensely, spreading from the living room into one of the apartment's two bedrooms, Chief Callan said. When firefighters entered the apartment, they found one person unconscious behind the front door. The rest were cowering in a bedroom.

"There's a good chance they tried to make it into the bedroom and were unable to shut the door" against the fire, Chief Callan said.

The flames spread quickly, and when firefighters reached the victims, four had been critically injured and several were unconscious, officials said. Firefighters extended a ladder to the bedroom window and began to take people out.

Authorities could not give a conclusive count of those who were injured last night. A Fire Department spokeswoman said nine people had been hurt, but Chief Callan said it was seven.

Ms. Newall said she ran into the building to try to reach the family but could not get through the thick smoke in the sixth-floor hallway.

"When they brought the father out, he was all covered with burns," she said.

The fire was quickly isolated and was extinguished by 8:55 p.m., 30 minutes after firefighters received the 911 call, said the spokeswoman, Susan Blake. It did not appear to have spread to any other apartments in the building, which is part of the Taylor-Wythe Houses.

Mrs. Newton, 60, had eight biological children and five adopted children, family members said. Three of her grandchildren were handicapped, and at least one was hurt in last night's fire. She was a member of True Light Ministries, a Brooklyn church, said her niece, Jackie Williams.

"She's the mother of the church," she said.

Mrs. Newton was an active child advocate who worked at the Brooklyn Children's Center in Crown Heights and was a board member of the Bushwick Community Center from 1990 to 1995, Ms. Williams said. Mr. Newton, 67, a retired engineer, drove a van for the church.

Mrs. Newton had lived in the Williamsburg neighborhood "before these projects were ever built," Ms. Newall said. Ms. Williams said Mrs. Newton was born in Quitman, Ga., and had moved to New York when she was 15 to live with her mother.

Relatives grieved outside the emergency room of Woodhull Hospital last night. They hugged one another. One woman wept, saying repeatedly, "They killed my family." Another was so upset that she collapsed onto the sidewalk, weeping.


Janon Fisher contributed reporting for this article.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 23, 2004
Child's Mishap With Match Faulted in Fire That Killed 4
By PATRICK HEALY

thick, smoky fire that killed four people in a Brooklyn apartment on Friday night began after a child playing in the living room dropped a lighted match between two couch cushions, fire officials said yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon, fire marshals continued to investigate the blaze, which spread rapidly through a sixth-floor apartment at 626 Wythe Place in Williamsburg, trapping seven family members inside. Residents of the housing project, the Taylor Wythe Houses, gathered on the sidewalks, gazed at the broken windows and told stories about the fire and the four lives it had taken.

A retired couple and two of their grandchildren died in the fire, and three others in the apartment were injured - one critically, fire officials said. A neighbor and another resident of the apartment who had been in the sixth-floor hallway suffered minor injuries, fire officials said.

Police, neighbors and friends said the victims were Murlene Newton, 59; her husband, Joseph Newton, 60; and their grandchildren, a young girl named Aretha and a 7-month-old boy, Dershawn. Aretha and Dershawn's mother, Diane Williams, 35, was in critical condition last night at Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center in Brooklyn.

Another girl living in the apartment, Victoria Williams, originally thought by some neighbors to have died in the fire, was actually staying with an aunt when the fire broke out.

The victims were among the eight or more people who lived in Apartment 6E of the Taylor Wythe Houses, a complex where most residents are Hasidic Jews and others are black and Hispanic. There are mezuzas on some door frames and portraits of Jesus in indelible black marker on doors down the hall.

The family in 6E walked between both worlds, neighbors said. On the Sabbath, Mr. Newton would flick on a light switch in an Orthodox Jewish neighbor's home. Mindful of her neighbors' thoughts on modesty, Ms. Newton, a faithful Baptist, donned a sweater over her tank top before visiting the Rosenbergs down the hall.

"Whenever we needed something, they would come over and help," said Rose Kohn, a neighbor. "We didn't think such a thing could happen."

Friends described Ms. Newton as the anchor of the family, a woman who had nine children in a first marriage and two children in her second - to Mr. Newton - and who had spent years caring for foster children and her own grandchildren.

"She was like an open house for children of the night," said Glennie Nitti, who grew up with Ms. Newton and was a bridesmaid at her second wedding.

Mr. Newton, a retired engineer, was a soft and gentle man who drove a van for the family's Baptist church in Bushwick and was the sergeant-at-arms of the housing project's tenants association. "I never seen that man upset," Ms. Nitti said. "Whatever Ms. Murlene wanted, he did."

Neighbors brought their problems to the Newtons' brown front door. Mr. Newton kept watch over who came and went inside the building. Ms. Newton heard complaints about bothersome neighbors, and soothed people when they were angry or hurt, neighbors said.

Fewer neighbors said they knew Diane Williams, a child from Ms. Newton's first marriage, but neighbors said she was kind and attentive to her children. "I used to see her come pick up her daughters off the bus," said Brian Holland, who lives in the Newtons' building.

The fire, which began in the living room, spread quickly through the apartment, and the family fled to a bedroom to escape the smoke, fire officials said. Neighbors glimpsed children's arms reaching out between the apartment's window guards. Over the sound of smoke detectors, they heard screams of "Help me! I can't breathe!"

In a press conference yesterday afternoon, Capt. Peter L. Gorman, the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, said crucial seconds had been lost in responding to the blaze.

Ladder Company 102 was the first at the scene, arriving in 4 minutes 23 seconds, fire officials said. Fire officials said that time is less than the citywide average of 4 minutes 50 seconds, but Mr. Gorman said help would have arrived sooner had Ladder Company 119, at 26 Hooper Street, not been closed for training.

In a statement, the Fire Department scorned the allegations, saying: "Shame on union officials for suggesting that the outcome could have been different in this tragedy. Their own members (firefighters and fire officers) arrived swiftly, acted aggressively and heroically, but despite their best efforts, these lives could not be saved."


Ann Farmer, Jess Wisloski and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top