Queens blaze kills woman, 93; FDNY fire marshals examine charred e-bike at Ozone Park scene
A 93-year-old woman died in a two-alarm fire at her Queens building on Friday, and authorities were investigating whether a charging e-bike battery was involved in the blaze.
Fire marshals examined a charred electric bike at the scene — but Fire Department officials on Friday evening were still working to determine the cause of the blaze in the building, which houses businesses and apartments.
Flames erupted just after 1:30 p.m. at 98-01 101 Ave. in Ozone Park. Medics took the woman to Jamaica Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Jack Koo, who identified himself as the woman’s son, said he left the building earlier in the day and came back to the news that his mother was gone and his home was destroyed.
“I left to pick up my daughter and I came back to this,” said Jack Koo. “My mother is dead. What can I do? What can I do?”
“My mom was just the best.”
A tenant, Thomas Rodriguez, said he saw Koo’s mother often.
“She was a very nice lady. She’d come down and visit occasionally but she barely spoke a word of English.”
Rodriguez’s wife Maria described her a dramatic escape from the couple’s upstairs apartment.
“I was taking a nap, and I heard a pop, and then loud popping,” said Maria Rodriguez, 67. “I saw the smoke. I saw the black smoke and I dialed 911.”
As she choked from the smoke, some neighborhood men approached with a ladder and advised her to escape. That would have meant she had to abandon her 13-year-old dog, Penny.
“I couldn’t leave my dog,” Rodriguez said. “My dog is an old lady, 13 going on 50. I didn’t want her to get burned.
“But the smoke was too much.”
Rodriguez escaped and was taken to a hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.
On Friday night, she and her husband clutched Penny. “My dog is alive. I left her, but she is alive,” Rodriguez said.
She cried out to Jack Koo: “Koo, what happened to your mother, what happened to your mom?”
Thomas Rodriguez said he saw the e-bike charging when he left the apartment in the morning. “I should have unplugged it, but I figured Jack was around. He’s always around,” he said.
Koo indicated to fire marshals checking the bike that it belonged to him.
Rodriguez said: “I’m not worried about the material stuff. I’m just glad they got my wife out, and I’m sad about the old woman.”
So far this year, 13 people have died and 88 people were hurt in blazes blamed on e-bike batteries, the Fire Department says. Four people died in Manhattan’s Chinatown in June in a fire blamed on charging batteries at an e-bike repair shop.
The burned Ozone Park building is across 101 Ave. from the site of the former Bergin Fish and Hunt Club, famed as a hangout for ‘Dapper Don’ Gambino family mobster John Gotti. The club closed more than 15 years ago.
