{"id":242838,"date":"2026-05-25T04:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T04:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/242838\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T04:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T04:37:07","slug":"beloved-brooklyn-youth-baseball-coach-killed-along-with-his-mother-in-apartment-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/242838\/","title":{"rendered":"Beloved Brooklyn youth baseball coach killed along with his mother in apartment fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

FLATBUSH, Brooklyn (WABC) — Two people were killed when a fire ripped through an apartment building in Brooklyn on Saturday<\/a> – a man and his elderly mother.<\/p>\n

The man was Jose Castro – a youth baseball coach.<\/p>\n

“Everybody liked him. He’s one of those kinds of people that when you first meet him, you really, like him immediately. And that sticks with you for as long as you know him,” said Bonnie Youth Club Athletic Director Jerry Katzke.<\/p>\n

The generations of men and boys who played baseball with the Bonnie Youth Club in Flatbush knew Castro a long time – he coached and managed teams there since 1987.<\/p>\n

Castro posted clips on Instagram where he coached the kids and mentored them with his program called ‘Books and Baseball.’<\/p>\n

On Saturday morning, fire ripped through the small apartment building on Nostrand Avenue in East Flatbush where Castro, 65, lived with his 86-year-old mother. Neither of them survived.<\/p>\n

“She was up there in age and, you know, in addition to all the stuff he did as a coach, I mean, he had a major responsibility, caring for her;” Katzke added.<\/p>\n

Castro had no children of his own – just his Brooklyn Bonnies baseball family.<\/p>\n

“Very good with kids. This guy was excellent. Kids loved to be around him. Very much. Parents loved him because of the kids,” said Bonnie Youth Club Coach Jaime Marizan.<\/p>\n

At their home fields of the Parade Grounds of Prospect Park, Castro would share advice like ‘never stop learning.’<\/p>\n

“He was most proud of the fact that, he was able to get that kind of enthusiasm and passion from the kids and, you know, and see them grow. I mean, not only as baseball players, but just as, you know, into mature adults,” said Katzke.<\/p>\n

“I helped him coach the last game he played, I was at first. He was at third. We lost by one. There’s a lot of things I’m going to remember about Jose. Good guy,” added Marizan.<\/p>\n

This tough loss for the Bonnie Youth Club is transforming its Hall of Fame ceremony this coming Friday into a tribute. Castro had already been inducted, but he will be honored as the beloved, bilingual coach and educator that he was, nurturing so many Central Brooklyn kids for decades.<\/p>\n

The FDNY is still investigating the cause of the deadly fire.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FLATBUSH, Brooklyn (WABC) — Two people were killed when a fire ripped through an apartment building in Brooklyn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[94866,9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-242838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-94866","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}