Boy, 3, playing with stove caused deadly N.Y. fire, officials say

NEW YORK, (Reuters) - A 3-year-old boy playing with the burners on a kitchen stove started a fire in a New York City apartment building that killed 12 people, including four children, city officials said yesterday.

The toddler had a history of fiddling with the stove in the kitchen of his family’s first-floor apartment, his mother told officials investigating the deadliest fire in the city since 1990.

Shortly before 7 p.m. (midnight GMT) on Thursday the child, who had been left unattended, started screaming as the kitchen filled with smoke and fire, Daniel Nigro, the city’s fire department commissioner, told reporters at a news conference. His mother grabbed him and a younger sibling, running outside to safety and leaving the apartment door open.

“The stairway acted like a chimney,” Nigro said at the Friday news conference. The blaze swept out the apartment doorway to higher floors of the five-story building, fanned by fresh oxygen each time frightened tenants flung open windows. “People had very little time to react,” he said. “They couldn’t get back down the stairs. Those that tried perished.”

Children aged 1, 2 and 7 as well as a boy whose age was unknown died, along with four men and four women, according to the New York Police Department.

Among the dead were at least three members of the same family Karen Francis, 37, Charmela Francis, 7, and Kylie Francis, 2. Also identified as deceased were Maria Batiz, 58, and 19-year-old Shantay Young.