The mother an Inwood man who died after leading his family out of a horrific fire has also succumbed to her injuries from the blaze, her distraught daughter told the Daily News Sunday.
Annie De La Cruz became the fourth person to die after a raging May 4 fire on Dyckman St. near Broadway sparked by a carelessly flicked cigarette, her daughter, Karla Garcia said.
Her son, Lance Garcia, 25, died the day of the blaze, after he led De La Cruz, his sister and his grandfather out of their fourth-floor apartment to a fire escape two floors down, then turned around to help more people upstairs. A former fashion editor and her mother also died trying to escape the blaze.
“My grandpa has still been sedated but he has done a bit better than my mom,” Karla Garcia said Saturday, before her mother had died. The mom was intubated, hooked up to two oxygen tanks because of the damage to her lungs, Garcia said. “I’m going to the hospital every single day and we’re just monitoring their progress.”
Garcia confirmed early Sunday De La Cruz had died, but was too distraught to speak about her.
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Lance Garcia (pictured) was one of four people killed in the Inwood fire early May 4. (GoFundMe)
Authorities on Monday arrested Victor Arias, 29, who was caught on video flicking a lit cigarette into a pile of cardboard boxes on the first floor and walking up the stairs. Within five minutes, the boxes began spewing smoke and 10 minutes later, the entire lobby was engulfed in flames, prosecutors said.
The fire quickly spread through the first-floor hallway and up the stairwell of the six-story building, torching a number of apartments whose doors had been left open, FDNY officials said.
Arias is charged with with three counts of criminally negligent homicide, and was granted supervised release without bail. Prosecutors said they don’t believe he intended to start the blaze.
“I think that he should face the consequences of his actions because his negligence cost us many lives and it cost us my livelihood,” Garcia said. “In spite of the judge releasing him, I do hope that in the future he does face the consequences of his actions.”
Barry Williams / New York Daily News
Victor Arias leaves criminal court in Manhattan on May 12. (Barry Williams / New York Daily News)
On Saturday, Garcia told the News that detectives described her brother’s selfless heroism, based on a video showing him leaving his grandfather and mother on a second-floor landing and heading back up the stairs, shining his phone’s flashlight as he went from door to door, floor to floor, knocking to see who might still be inside.
“He makes it all the way almost to the roof,” his sister said. “He was steps away from reaching the door to the roof [when he passed out].”
“It’s not surprising at all. That’s very much in his character. I think with my family, given our special circumstances living with two elders, he has to sacrifice a lot in many aspects of our life, so that’s very in character for him.”
Lance and his sister shared a room for most of their lives, she said, and when the fire broke out, he was the one to wake his family, she recounted.
“The building itself had many violations, one of them being the alarms, and ours in particular [did not work], so my brother woke us all up,” she said. Garcia said she managed to climb down the fire escape outside her apartment, but her grandfather wouldn’t have been able to do the same.
“My grandfather has very very limited mobility — he walks at a very slow pace. (Lance) stayed with them, and he left them in the perfect place to survive, the second floor,” she said. “From one aspect, I was proud of my brother because I know that’s the kind of person that he is. It’s very within his character. But at the same time, it did make me feel another really heavy weight knowing that he was able to save my other two relatives but he couldn’t save himself.”
The firefighters came quickly, she said, describing how she saw them get her grandfather first, lay him on the concrete pavement and give him oxygen.
“And then I waited quite a while for them to take my mother out of the building,” she said. “By the time she got out she was already unconscious. I spoke to the firefighters and they told me she was injured.”
She kept on asking about her brother, hoping he might have been rescued and taken to a different hospital than the rest of the family.
“A lot of my relatives were going hospital to hospital looking for my brother,” she said.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
A raging May 4 fire on Dyckman St. near Broadway in Inwood has claimed a fourth victim. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Yolaine Diaz, a 48-year-old former fashion editor for People en Español, and her 73-year-old mother, Ana Mirtha Lantigua, collapsed in the smoke-filled stairwell near Lance Garcia, both dying in the fire.
Garcia’s sister described him as the man of the house, and said he looked after both their mom and ailing grandmother, the latter who died in January. In his free time, he loved to go to the gym and play pickup basketball games.
“My brother was incredibly quiet and reserved but he was also incredibly selfless and considerate and always put others’ needs before his own, even in dire circumstances, and that cost him his life,” his sister said. “Through every stage of life, I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better older brother.”