Boy, 9, tries to get help for dad, who’s killed in S.I. fire
A 9-YEAR-BOY ran from a burning home in Staten Island, pleading with neighbors to help save his dad, who was trapped in a blaze apparently ignited by birthday candles.
“Please, please help me get my dad!” Tony Carter Jr. screamed, according to witnesses. “He can’t die!”
Despite the boy’s pleas, Anthony died in the Saturday night fire on Pembrook Loop in Charleston. The dad was celebrating his 62nd birthday.
“(The boy) was in shock and shaking, saying ‘Help my dad, help my dad!’ ” neighbor Luba Sherr said.
Carter Jr., whose face was covered in soot and his hands singed, got the attention of a trio of neighbors who rushed to the house.
Joey Khoury, 43, Danny Spatola, 44, and Bobby Micara, 52, grabbed a hose in the back of the Carter family’s townhouse and frantically tried to douse the flames.
“I extended out the hose as much as I could,” Khoury told the Daily News on Sunday morning. “I put it on my shoulders.”
As firefighters attacked the blaze, neighbor Luba Sherr, 57, consoled the young Carter — who told neighbors there were candles in the house — before an ambulance arrived.
The fire erupted in a kitchen on the first floor and rapidly spread to the second and third floors. It took about 100 firefighters to bring the blaze under control. The fire started about 11 p.m.
“It’s terrible this happened,” Sherr said. “His father was his life.”
The boy, who attends Public School 56 in Rossville, was rushed to Staten Island University Hospital, where he was being treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation.
“I spoke with him a few hours ago,” his older brother, Walter Carter, 29, said Sunday afternoon. “He’s on oxygen. They’re monitoring his vitals. He’s coughing up phlegm with black soot. Other than that, he’s definitely going to be fine.”
Walter and his twin brother, Calvin, said their dad, a college business professor, dedicated his life to mentoring and assisting those in need.
“It didn’t matter who you were, race (or) ethnicity,” said Calvin before flying to New York from his home in Iowa City, Iowa. “If you needed help, he would be there for you.”
Anthony Carter was the first in his family to graduate from college. But he declined lucrative gigs to work as a professor, according to his sons. He helped low-income students get into college and helped others land jobs, his son said.
Anthony Carter was the son of a sanitation enforcement agent and a homemaker. He was the first in his family to earn a bachelor’s degree, and went on to obtain a law degree and an MBA.
“He was selfless,” Walter said. “Anything to even cheer someone up who he thought was feeling down. He always tried doing the right thing.”
A few miles away, firefighters on Sunday morning put out a blaze that ripped through the upper floors of a six-story apartment building in New Dorp.
Five firefighters were taken to a hospital, one of them in serious condition. Four cops and 10 residents suffered minor injures. The cause of the fire is under investigation.