2 people killed in NYC fire

Harlem youth mentor one of victims of brownstone blaze

NEW YORK — A Harlem youth mentor was one of two men killed by a fire that tore through a Manhattan brownstone Friday night, officials and family members said Saturday.

The raging blaze broke out on the second floor of a four-story home on West 132nd Street near Malcolm X Boulevard around 11:45 p.m.

“There were big flames shooting out the window,” one neighbor, who would only identify herself as Janet, told the Daily News. “I was scared because I heard people were inside, and I heard them screaming.”

Responding firefighters found two men inside the burning building. One died at the scene, cops said. The second died at Harlem Hospital.

Friends identified the man who died at the hospital as 27-year-old Tyquan Carthens, a longtime member of the Living Redemption Community Development Corporation, a Harlem youth empowerment group.

Carthens, known to his friends as TJ, rented a room on the top floor of the brownstone, said Dorin Hammond, who mentored the young man at Living Redemption.

“TJ was joy,” Hammond, 41, said. “He brought happiness. He brought laughter. He was full of smiles and full of good energy.”

Carthens was a skilled basketball player and always seized the opportunity to “dance his butt off,” Hammond recalled.

“He loved good times, and you’d have a good time in his presence. He was definitely loved.” he said.

Two other building tenants were taken to the hospital suffering from smoke inhalation and other minor injuries.

“I was at the hospital when one of them died,” said Jesus Sierra, who was hospitalized after inhaling lungfuls of smoke as he escaped his ground-floor apartment. “I feel for them, but I’m glad that God put his hands over me. I would have been the third [fatality].”

Sierra, 66, was lying in his bed unaware that a blaze was raging above him until a firefighter pounded on his door, he said.

“When I opened the door I got a rush [of smoke],” Sierra recalled. “[The firefighter] pushes me out and says, ‘Don’t you know what’s going on?’”

Sierra exited his apartment through the back yard and saw the firefighters hosing down the building.

“There was black water everywhere,” he said. “The firefighters had brought a big ladder to the back yard and were breaking windows.”

A 32-year-old man was also treated at Harlem Hospital and released, officials said.

Khadime Niane, who lived on the top floor of the building, bruised his eye escaping the burning building.

“There was smoke so you couldn’t see much,” explained Niane, who had just returned home from some Black Friday shopping when the fire broke out. “I opened the door with my hand and tried to go downstairs. I fell down two times but I was able to get out. I couldn’t really see anything,” he said.

More than 100 firefighters fought the blaze, which was extinguished shortly after 1 a.m. The cause of the blaze was still under investigation Saturday.

Gabrielle Baker, who lives next door to the burning building, was at home with her 98-year-old mother when she heard glass breaking and her neighbors screaming, “Fire!”

“I looked out the top window and I can see the flames,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Let me go down, grab the coats, grab the bags and get her out of here.’ When I opened the door, the embers from the fire and glass was falling so I was trying to get my mom out first and figure out how I’m going to get out. One of the neighbors of the block helped me.”

On Saturday morning, firefighters were gutting the insides of the brownstone, so the fire would not reignite, she said.

“This building is burnt to a crisp and FDNY was out here all morning throwing stuff out,” she said. “I just thank God the fire didn’t spread.”

After he was released, Sierra, an Army vet who works at a local veterans hospital, was allowed to return to his apartment to collect his belongings.

“I got the presents I bought for somebody,” he said. “All of my stuff is dry, but the corner of my apartment is filled with water. And there’s a lot of stuff they broke.

“I’m shocked,” he said, recalling his near-death experience. “Imagine coming home, laying down and then you have a fire? Now I gotta find a place to stay.”

Neighbors were left rattled by the tragedy as many on the block began preparing for the Christmas holiday.

“I feel sad about it, man. It’s my neighborhood,” said a distraught Russel Lowery, 60. “I feel sad for those people, especially now, since it’s the holidays.”