Woman killed by Brooklyn fire after leaving oxygen machine to flee

A 67-year-old Brooklyn woman tried in vain to escape a fire after spending Mother's Day with her family, even undoing the oxygen mask she uses in the hopes she’d get out alive, her heartbroken daughter said.

"I’m going to die here today," victim Janice Ross told her daughter as the family frantically sought safety from the 2 a.m. blaze.

The grandmother of three collapsed on the first floor of the three-story apartment building on E. 92nd St. near Clarkson Ave. in East Flatbush. She was rushed by medics to Kings County Hospital, where she died.

"I was coming down with her," daughter Loreen Ross said. "When she reached downstairs, she just collapsed right on the floor."

The victim's 8-year-old granddaughter was treated at the same hospital for smoke inhalation and is recovering. Other families in the building got out safely.

Janice Ross, 67, was killed when a fire erupted in a three-story house on E. 92nd St. near Clarkson Ave. in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, Monday.

The fire may have been caused by an outdoor grill that was used on Sunday but not properly extinguished.

The victim lived in a third-floor apartment with Loreen Ross and another daughter, a son-in-law and three grandchildren.

The family was sleeping when the victim's younger daughter heard the crackling of flames, saw the fire and screamed out that everyone needed to get up and run for their lives.

Everyone escaped except for Janice Ross, who wears an oxygen machine mask attached to a ventilator but removed it so she could walk downstairs.

Janice Ross, 67, was killed when a fire erupted in a three-story house on E. 92nd St. near Clarkson Ave. in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, Monday. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

The strain of the escape and her poor health were too much to overcome, her distraught family said.

"She's on oxygen 24/7," Loreen Ross said. "When she's in the house, she's got to be on oxygen. I believe inhaling smoke and not being on oxygen, that's double trouble."

Sixty firefighters responded and brought the blaze under control at 2:37 a.m.

The fire sent shockwaves along the block.

"We call her grandma," a former neighbor said. "She's a very great lady. She always says, ‘Hello.’ She's a part of the community. She's an elder. Everybody loves her here. We feel very bad about it. It's a big tragedy."

Janice Ross, 67, was killed when a fire erupted in a three-story house on E. 92nd St. near Clarkson Ave. in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, Monday. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

Hours earlier, the family, many of them from Grenada, celebrated Mother's Day with a shared meal in their apartment. They were not the ones who used an outdoor grill.

As the night wore on, Loreen, as always, helped her mother put on her mask.

A short time later, she ran to the mother's side, urging her to get out of bed and flee.

"It's heartbreaking," Loreen Ross said.

Janice Ross, 67, was killed when a fire erupted in a three-story house on E. 92nd St. near Clarkson Ave. in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, Monday. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

Three hours earlier, a one-year-old boy died in an attic fire in an illegally subdivided Queens home, despite his mother and grandmother's desperate efforts to save him.

The blaze broke out in the two-story house on 106th Ave. near 142nd St. in Jamaica about 10:50 p.m. Sunday, authorities said. Medics rushed little Jason Eli to Cohen Children's Medical Center, but he could not be saved.

Last week, nine people were killed citywide in three separate fires.

Early last Tuesday, Mufeed Al Haddad, 37, was inside his East New York home using an accelerant to make vape dispensers he could sell when he accidentally sparked a fire that killed his wife Amal Haddad, 36, and their daughter Dawlah, 10, officials said.

Another daughter, Rawan, 18, later died at Brookdale University Hospital. Two other children, Rana, 14, and her brother, Ismael, 9, were badly hurt and the family patriarch, who escaped with burns on his hands, is now under investigation. The Daily News confirmed with family Monday that Rana has since also died.

That same morning, a 70-year-old woman was killed in a Bronx fire on Grant Ave. in Concourse Village. The victim's husband said he believes burning incense sparked the blaze.

Two days earlier, a fire caused by an e-scooter battery ripped through an Inwood apartment on W. 190th St.

Family matriarch Bertha Domenech Santiago, 94, and her disabled nephew, Luis Dominech, died from their injuries.

Two others, Santiago's home health aide and a male tenant of the building, were reported Thursday to have also died. Their names have not yet been released.

For the year, the FDNY said Monday, 51 people have been killed in fires citywide. Last year through the same day the tally was 48. And for all of last year, there were 98 fire fatalities.