Mom of Wash. Heights toddlers left apt. a half hour before fire broke out, sez DA
The mother of two toddler boys who were critically injured in a Washington Heights fire had left her children alone in the apartment about a half hour before the fire broke out, Manhattan prosecutors said Saturday.
Four days before the fire, mom Skilyn Maldonado had been arrested for robbing a 29-year-old woman of her phone with two accomplices who remained at large, police confirmed.
Maldonado was caught on surveillance cameras leaving the home on Audubon Ave. near W. 175th St. about 10:25 p.m. on Thursday, leaving her three children, a 2-year-old boy, his 1-year-old brother, and an 8-year-old girl, alone in the apartment.
A blaze broke out in the apartment about 11 p.m., according to court documents.
The time line was released as Manhattan prosecutors arraigned Maldonado, 23, on child endangerment charges Friday.
Neighbors said Maldonado constantly left her children alone.
“She would just leave the kids home by themselves,” said one neighbor who wished not to be named. “She doesn’t have a job at all. She would leave them alone morning, day and night.
“I saw the 8-year-old daughter alone coming up the stairs with milk the day of the fire,” the neighbor recalled. “[Maldonado] left them alone about 6 p.m.”
Maldonado lives with the father of two of the children who is in his 50s, the neighbor said.
“She’s young and wanted to enjoy her life,” the neighbor said about Maldonado. “[He has] been trying to get her out of the house for a bit. They fight all the time. You can hear him screaming, ‘Leave the house! You don’t do nothing. You been going into the street and never coming home!’”
It was not immediately disclosed why Maldonado left her home Thursday night. On Saturday, FDNY fire marshals were still trying to determine what sparked the fire.
Cops charged the mom with three counts of acting in a manner injurious to a child, misdemeanors. Manhattan prosecutors asked that Maldonado be held on $30,000 bail, but Judge Janet McDonnell instead had her enrolled in an alternative to incarceration program.
The misdemeanor offenses are not considered bail eligible, court officials said.
When the fire broke out, Maldonado’s daughter ran out of the apartment and banged on a neighbor’s door, pleading for help.
“She was saying there is a fire in her apartment,” neighbor Jayden Zorilla, 14, told The News on Thursday. “My mom and I were trying to see if we can bring out the kids, but the couch was on fire. When I entered, the window glass broke, and there was blazing fire.”
Jayden’s mother, Yucania Germosen, 40, wrapped the little girl in a blanket and asked her 10-year-old son, Justin, to take her downstairs. “She had burns on her face, and her hair was also burnt,” Justin said.
Doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia treated the girl for burns to her scalp and shoulder. Her brothers suffered burns and smoke inhalation and remained in critical condition.
It took nearly 60 firefighters an hour to bring the fire under control after flames spread in the building above a street-level restaurant, the Emergency Snack Bar Plus.