QNS. GRAN’S LAST GASPS
Vid shows cops’ failed rescue
Video obtained by The Post shows the moment three Queens cops carried a 91-year-old woman down a smoke-filled hallway — before they dumped her and left.
The surveillance footage is part of a legal notice of claim set to be filed by the family of great-greatgrandma Ethel Davis, who died of smoke inhalation a day after the Jan. 12 blaze at her apartment building in Rockaway Beach.
The footage shows the feeble, bewildered woman, in a nightgown and socks, being hauled off by NYPD Sgt. Timothy Brovakos, who is aided by two other cops, at around 11:30 a.m.
But Brovakos is quickly overcome by smoke, and Davis gets abandoned on the floor outside a hallway exit door as his two comrades help him to a lower floor.
Firefighters are seen arriving on the floor about a minute later, although it doesn’t appear that they notice Davis because of the smoke.
It may have taken as long as five minutes for Davis to be taken to a lower floor to safety, the video shows.
“When you look at the video in a bubble, it looks like they’re being heroes,’’ Peter Thomas, the family’s lawyer, said of the cops.
“But you need to look at the big picture: They’re already violating protocol by attempting this evacuation.
“At each and every step, the officers on the scene did precisely the wrong thing.’’
Cops responding to the blaze left open the stairwell door on the 12th floor where Davis lived, Thomas said.
That, he said, allowed smoke from the fire — ignited by a tipped-over halogen lamp in an apartment on the 11th floor — to fill the upper floor’s hall.
Cops also were forcing resi- dents of the fireproofed building to flee. That is against NYPD and FDNY protocol, given the construction of the building.
Davis’ daughter Marcia has said she and her mom begged the officers to let them stay inside the apartment.
“I told them she’d been safer in the house with the door closed and that she wouldn’t survive in the hallway,’’ Marcia Davis told The Post on Monday.
“When I got to near the stairwell, I saw her on the floor. I said, ‘Mama, what you doing here? Why they leave you here?’ I stayed with her as long as I could. It got so black, I was choking.”
Marcia said she watched the video for the first time this past weekend.
“It was very sad. It was horrible,’’ she said.
Brovakos’ lawyer has said that when the sergeant recovered, he risked his life again to go back to get Davis.
The Davis family’s notice of claim is a precursor to a lawsuit and targets the NYPD, city, Brovakos and the other two cops, among others.
The NYPD has said it was conducting a “major investigation’’ into the incident.