By Shawn Inglima, Rocco Parascandola, Colin Mixson
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — A Brooklyn man was seriously injured in a desperate leap from his fourth-floor apartment after his kitchen caught fire on Tuesday, firefighters said.
The 42-year-old victim became trapped inside his top-floor apartment on Keap St. near Marcy Ave. in Williamsburg after the blaze erupted in his kitchen around 11:30 a.m., FDNY Deputy Chief Joe Duggan told reporters at the scene.
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Surrounded by smoke and searing heat, the victim chose to escape the fire by leaping through a front window to the street just as firefighters were arriving on scene, Duggan said.
“He jumped before we had an opportunity to get our equipment in place,” Duggan said. “If you’ve ever been in a room on fire, it does greatly panic you at times. He felt he had to go. He couldn’t wait.”
A woman living in a neighboring building smelled smoke and ran outside just as the victim jumped from his fourth-floor window.
“I saw black smoke coming from the front windows and then I heard him screaming,” said the neighbor, who gave her name as Anna. “I guess he couldn’t escape, so he jumped. He was moaning and groaning on the ground.”
The victim was seriously injured but was conscious and talking as Hatzola medics rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, Duggan said.
Firefighters managed to contain the fire in the kitchen after a nearly hour-long battle, Duggan said.
Police officers called in the NYPD’s bomb squad about an hour after the fire was extinguished to investigate suspicious devices discovered on the building’s third floor, but these were later determined to be home-made workout equipment filled with sand and declared inert, a law enforcement source told the Daily News.
Fire marshals are investigating the cause of the fire.
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