NEW YORK _ A Bronx teen died Wednesday, three days after he raced into a raging apartment fire and carried a 3-year-old girl down 14 flights of stairs in a desperate and ultimately unsuccessful rescue attempt, relatives and police sources said Wednesday.
Lucas Silverio ran up toward the flames in the early morning hours Sunday after a fire in the compactor room of a Bronx building went up a shaft to the 14th floor, with mom Jasmine Moreno and daughter Yasleen McDonald forced to flee through the billowing smoke and searing heat from an apartment one floor up.
When mother and daughter tripped and became separated in the dense smoke, the 19-year-old Silverio heard Jasmine screaming for her lost child, the sources said.
He ran back up the stairs and found the little girl on the 14th floor. Silverio grabbed the girl just as both were scalded by a massive blast of heat and fire, according to the sources.
Silverio, who was naked, burned and disoriented when he reached the ground floor, delivered the badly burned Yasleen to waiting firefighters and paramedics. The little girl, suffering from smoke inhalation and burns over 80% of her tiny body, died one day later at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Silverio was burned over 80% of his body as well and died Wednesday.
The cause of the fire, though still under investigation, does not appear to be suspicious. The blaze started around 1:45 a.m. inside 725 Garden St., about one block from the Bronx Zoo.
Residents described a chaotic scene of blinding smoke, heat and fire, with firefighters unable to bring the blaze under control for two hours.
