Beloved 90-year-old woman killed in Bronx apartment building fire

A 90-year-old woman known as a fixture in her community was killed in a fire that tore through a residential Bronx building Tuesday night, according to authorities.Firefighters responded to the blaze on the second floor of a two-story apartment building on Boston Road and Forest Avenue around 8:53 p.m., according to the FDNY.Roughly 60 smoke eaters and EMS personnel rushed to the scene and extinguished the flames by 9:36 p.m., officials said.One person, the 90-year-old woman, was found inside the building and pronounced dead on the scene by EMS, according to the NYPD.

Her identity was withheld pending family notification.Neighbors described the elderly victim as a beloved member of the community.“She is a godly woman, god-fearing, she is very friendly, she is very well known in the community,” Dorita Joseph, a neighbor of the nonagenarian for over 25 years, said.“We love gardening, so we both exchange flowers.

She taught me a bit about gardening,” Joseph recalled.“It’s a very sad night.Not only for us as her neighbors, but for the community,” she said.

Another resident said the victim was confined to a wheelchair, so she was likely unable to escape the flames.“The lady that lives there, who is wheelchair-bound, that’s in that apartment.We haven’t seen nobody come out,” a nearby resident, Stacey, said of the woman who died.“Nice lady too … just being neighbors on the block, you see her coming and going, we all say hi, everybody says hi to each other around here,” she said.Residents of the building were unsure if they’d be able to sleep in their own beds Tuesday night.Joseph said her apartment was very smoky hours later and still has a “horrible smell” from the aftermath of the fire.The Fire Marshall’s office will investigate the cause of the blaze, police said....