Witnesses heard booms, screams in fatal fire

NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on a fire that killed five people, three of them children, in Queens (all times local):

6:20 p.m.

Witnesses reported hearing a series of loud booms and saw someone tumble from a second-story window during a New York City fire that killed five people, including three children.

Neighbor Denise Coleman told the Daily News of New York that people were screaming to get the children out. She said some of the children were limp and the smoke was overwhelming.

Another witness, Tiasha Johnson, told the newspaper that the family’s relative screamed for the little ones.

New York City officials say five people are dead and multiple people have been injured in the Sunday afternoon fire in a Queens neighborhood.

Officials say the blaze was the deadliest fire in the nation’s biggest city since March 2015, when a house fire in Brooklyn killed seven children, all siblings.

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5:30 p.m.

New York City officials say five people, including children, are dead and multiple people have been injured in a house fire.

The fire broke out Sunday afternoon shortly after 2 p.m. in the Queens Village neighborhood of Queens. The two-story single family home was engulfed by the four-alarm blaze. Television news footage showed flames chewing through the roof and roaring in upstairs rooms of the house as smoke poured from it.

Officials said five people have died. Witnesses heard loud booms before the blaze broke out. A neighbor told the New York Post that she saw a baby who was very badly burned being carried from the home.

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