A truly great great-granny
Qns. fire vic mourned as ‘rescue’ probe deepens
The Queens great-greatgrandma who died after police left her in a smoke-filled hall during a fire in her apartment building was mourned by relatives on Friday — as the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau joined the investigation into her death.
“It was terrible, just the way she went out, with the smoke,” daughter Chinatta Jones said at a wake for 91-year-old Ethel Davis in Far Rockaway.
Jones, 67, of Danville, Va., blamed the NYPD sergeant who moved Davis out of her fire-safe apartment in Rockaway Beach during the Jan. 12 blaze but set her down in the hall because her 160-pound frame was too heavy to carry out of the building.
“He should have left her where she was at,” Jones said. “It was a bad move, because she would have been alive right today.”
The IAB has now joined the Queens borough command in investigating why Sgt. Timothy Brovakos didn’t leave Davis in her apartment, said the Davis family’s lawyer, Peter S. Thomas.
Davis’ daughter Marcia, who lived with the mother of six and great-great-grandmother of 16, said she begged the sergeant to leave Davis behind the apartment’s fireproof door as the blaze burned a floor below.
Marcia told The Post that they waited 10 minutes as smoke poured into the hall. The sergeant, himself injured from smoke inhalation, returned with help to rescue Davis, who was overcome by the fumes and died the next day.
Brovakos’ union lawyer at the Sergeants Benevolent Association has called the sergeant a hero for trying to save Davis.
“Ask the fire officials where they were,” the lawyer, Andrew Quinn, complained last week, touching off a turf battle with the FDNY.
The FDNY, meanwhile, has stressed that cops shouldn’t evacuate otherwise safe residents and should avoid entering fire scenes anyway.
Davis was remembered by family on Friday as a cheerful, generous woman who worked for years as a health aide.
A neighbor marveled at the wonderful aromas that would fill the hallway as Davis cooked.
“You could smell her food,” said the neighbor, Rebecca Speller, 55. “Soul food, country food. Cornbread, greens, pig feet, chitlins. She was a cook.”
Added daughter Jones, “She lived a wonderful life.”