{"id":315792,"date":"2026-08-07T04:06:49","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/315792\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T04:06:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T04:06:49","slug":"grandmother-in-bronx-fiery-explosion-still-missing-feared-dead-as-relatives-say-husband-killed-in-blaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/315792\/","title":{"rendered":"Grandmother in Bronx fiery explosion still missing, feared dead, as relatives say husband killed in blaze"},"content":{"rendered":"

The family of a 65-year-old Bronx grandmother who remains unaccounted for more than 24 hours after a fiery explosion destroyed her apartment building<\/a> fears she died in the blaze and her body is still buried in the smoldering rubble.<\/p>\n

Tashaila Parks, who said her uncle Lester Martin, 70, died in Wednesday\u2019s massive fire on E. 209th St building in Norwood, is hoping her aunt Mary Martin will be found safe. But every passing hour without any news only solidifies the grim reality her family is facing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still waiting to find out about my aunt,\u201d Parks told the Daily News at the scene of Wednesday\u2019s five-alarm fire near Parkside Place. \u201cShe is still unaccounted for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard,\u201c she added, fighting back tears. \u201cWe just recently lost one of their sons, my cousin, in December. It\u2019s been a hard year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authorities have not released the name of the man found dead in Wednesday\u2019s blaze. FDNY sources confirmed that firefighters were told that Mary Martin hadn\u2019t been accounted for.<\/p>\n

A drone sent into the rubble Thursday located a dead body inside the building, but it wasn\u2019t immediately clear if it was a man or a woman, an NYPD source said.<\/p>\n

Lester and Mary had lived in a third-floor apartment above the apartment where the explosion erupted at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had been together forever, for more than 40 years,\u201d Park said about her aunt and uncle. \u201cThey were very much still in love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tashaila spoke to The News just hours after she identified her uncle\u2019s body at the hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy uncle was a great man,\u201d said Parks. \u201cIt was obvious that he suffered from burns and smoke inhalation. We\u2019re all taking it hard, especially his remaining son.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lester Martin\u2019s body was found in a collapsed section of the building and had to be temporarily stored in an alley before being transferred to the hospital in a body bag, family members and sources said.<\/p>\n

He had recently retired and was enjoying spending time with his family following the recent death of his son. The couple had one surviving son and several grandchildren, his niece said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just got back from a big family trip to Pennsylvania,\u201d said Parks. \u201cWe had a wonderful time just being together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut now this happened,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Surveillance footage obtained by The News shows the explosion erupting on the building\u2019s second floor, sending glass and other debris rocketing across the street.<\/p>\n

Rah Johnson was walking with his wife when they heard a deafening boom and were struck by a torrent of shattered glass.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked like a tornado instantly hit it. The way it blew like that it seemed like a gas explosion,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cThe glass scraped (my wife\u2019s) ear, and she was bleeding.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another clip, a man can be seen walking on the opposite side of the street when he ducks, narrowly missing a flying window frame as debris lands all around him. A parked car visible in the frame takes the brunt of the shrapnel, which shatters its rear windshield, the video shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was some sort of explosion. It blew out window frames, it blew some of them across the street, and when our members got up to the second floor, some of the apartment doors had been blown off their hinges,\u201d FDNY Chief of Department Joe Esposito said Wednesday. \u201cThis makes it very difficult to confine the fire while we\u2019re also conducting searches.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FDNY said 14 people were injured in the fire, two critically. Six of the injured were firefighters.<\/p>\n

Though early reports indicated a lithium-ion battery may have been responsible, investigators now suspect a gas leak triggered the explosion, FDNY sources said.<\/p>\n

Tenants told officials that they had smelled gas in the building before the fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cI smelled gas. I started checking the house to see if anything was leaking,\u201d tenant Daniel Mercado, 49, told the Daily News. \u201cI checked the hallway. I sat down and an hour or two later it exploded. (The) wall fell, (the) ceiling fell,\u201d said Mercado.<\/p>\n

The massive fire, which brought more than 300 firefighters to the scene, was finally put out by Wednesday evening. Fire Marshals were shoring up the building on Thursday, trying to get to the flashpoint so they could determine what triggered the explosion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family of a 65-year-old Bronx grandmother who remains unaccounted for more than 24 hours after a fiery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,265,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-315792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315792","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=315792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}