Bronx mom copes with son’s tragic death in fire: ‘I don’t wish that pain on nobody’
WAKEFIELD, the Bronx (PIX11) – Keyion Gonzales-Marquis lost her 5-year-old son Kashmir Marquis after a January fire in their Bronx residence on Barnes Avenue.
“To have my baby in my hands, hold him from he was warm until he turned stiff. That pain, I don’t wish that pain on nobody,” said Gonzales-Marquis.
The suffering remains intact.
“I never knew that was going to be the last time I was going to see my son alive,” she added.
The fire happened on Wednesday, Jan. 3. She took him to school that morning. Then, at around 5 p.m., her life crumbled.
“I was talking to my mom just a regular conversation in the afternoon, and she called me back 20 minutes later, and she was crying. I pulled up the ring camera in front of my house, and I saw there was smoke, and I see the firefighters coming into the house. And I’m where is my son? Where is my son? But it is so loud I doubt they could hear me,” explained Gonzales-Marquis.
According to authorities, Kashmir was found unconscious on a bed in the basement.
“I saw my baby there, and they were trying to resuscitate him, and my baby wouldn’t wake up,” she said.
The little boy, his 83-year-old grandmother and his 26-year-old aunt were taken to Jacobi Medical Center for smoke inhalation. The two females survived.
The exact cause of the fire remains under investigation.
It was Keyion’s birthday last week.
“Having a first birthday, not being able to hear him or touch him or see him, just spending with him, it was hard,” expressed Gonzales-Marquis.
His mom described him as a beam of light and a very happy kid. Kashmir loved video games and music. He passed away just two weeks after turning 5.
“He came to me in a dream, and I told him I loved him with everything in me, and he said i know, mami, I know, so I know he knows I love him, and anybody that knows me knows how much i love my son,” she said.
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