FUMES KILL THREE Baby, 2 adults found dead in Bronx home

Two Bronx adults and an infant were killed yesterday by carbon monoxide from a gasoline generator they were using because their electricity had been cut off, officials said.

The colorless, odorless fumes filled the three-story home at 1708 Popham Ave., slowly robbing the family members inside of oxygen until they passed out and died.

"This is the worst thing that could have happened," Sharleen Williams, 26, a relative of the victims, said outside the house last night.

The tragedy was discovered just before 8 p.m. when Williams' brother, Lawrence, stopped by the home, his distraught sister said.

Near the front door, he found Jody Richards, 19, a new mother, semiconscious and called 911.

Firefighters searched the rest of the home and made a grim find on the top floor - a man, a woman and a baby girl, all dead.

"Our neighbor was screaming," said Kwame Nkrumah, who lives next door. "He was in hysterics."

The victims were identified by relatives as Richards' husband, car mechanic Patrick Williams, 26; their daughter, 2-month-old Patricia, and Williams' mother, Erna Dennis, 54.

Richards was rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital in critical condition. Her prognosis was unclear last night.

Fire officials said a portable gasoline-powered generator in the attached garage apparently was to blame for the killer fumes.

"It wasn't running when we got here," Fire Chief John Salka said. "It was out of gas, and it may have run until it was out of gas."

The generator was supplying power to the home because Con Edison shut off the electricity on Thursday for nonpayment.

"They were deeply in arrears," said Chris Olert, a spokesman for the utility. "We give people lots of opportunity to pay their bills."

He said workers had tried to contact the owner of the building - a relative of the victims - by phone and in person.

After Nov. 1, before service was suspended, Con Ed tried to determine if a child under 2 or an adult over 62 lived in the building.

Olert said Con Edison was never able to reach anyone at the Popham Ave. home and was unaware that there was an infant staying there.

"How were we to know?" Olert said. "We did all the right things to try and contact them."

But as Sharleen Williams grieved for her aunt and cousins, she blasted the power company.

"How are you going to leave a newborn baby freezing in a house?" she said. "The landlord, my uncle, was out of town."

Authorities said the family made a terrible mistake by keeping the generator in an enclosed space.

"It's more dangerous than you can imagine," Salka said. "Anything with a gasoline motor should never be run inside a building."

Carbon monoxide starves the body of oxygen and causes victims to feel dizzy and nauseous. If they don't get fresh air fast enough, the buildup can kill them.

Carbon monoxide is the top cause of accidental poisoning deaths in the U.S., claiming more than 2,000 lives each year.

In August, two painters working in a home in Wyandanch, L.I., with a generator running in the basement, succumbed to the fumes.

A few weeks later, a man and a woman on a boat outside Queens died while using a gasoline generator during the multistate blackout.

[Illustration] Caption: PHOTOS BY CHET GORDON TRAGEDY Rescue personnel gather on porch at house where two adults and a baby were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning last night. Gas generator inside the Bronx home was blamed for tragedy. At right, two relatives console each other.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

11/22/2003
Nov 22, 2003
TOM RAFTERY and TRACY CONNOR DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Copyright Daily News, L.P. Nov 22, 2003