A home health aide and a young man working hard to bring his mother to New York from the Dominican Republic were among the people killed along with an 94-year-old woman and her nephew when a lithium battery fire swept through an Upper Manhattan apartment earlier this month.
Relatives said Maryuri Isabel Beneditt was caring for Bertha Domenech Santiago, 94, in the Washington Heights apartment where they both died after an electric scooter battery sparked the deadly May 7 blaze.
Santiago’s nephew Luis Dominech also died, along with 20-year-old Luis Zorrilla, a high school graduate who was working tirelessly to reunite with his mother.
Relatives said Zorrilla had at least two jobs and often used a scooter to get around. It was a scooter’s lithium battery that sparked the fast-moving fire, according to firefighters. Investigators pulled the charred remains of a scooter from the building, and friends and neighbors said the vehicle belonged to Zorrilla.
“He was a hard-working kid. He did everything to bring his mother from the Dominican Republic to New York. Sometimes he even went without food,” said a friend, Peter Rodriguez, 43.
“She never got here. He wanted to get an associates degree to become a mechanic. It’s just a damn tragedy.”
Rodriguez was looking after a makeshift memorial put together in Zorrilla’s honor at the car wash where he worked on W. 187th St. There, at the site, were pictures of Zorrilla, crates of votive candles and flowers.
Beneditt was the mother of three children, according to a GoFundMe site launched by a relative to raise money to bring her body back to her native Honduras.
Santiago’s grandson, Robert Santiago, 43, said his grandmother worked as a hotel housekeeper until she was in her 70s.
“She was a caring, loving person,” the grandson said. “Everybody loved her. She had a heart of gold.”
Santiago said his grandmother had been caring for Dominech, who also died in the fire.
“She was like a mother to him,” he said.