Newsday

Sarah Felix was pronounced dead at the scene after her father, Diogenes Felix, 44, tried in vain to find her in the dark, smoke-filled apartment at 2076 Bronx Park E., authorities and witnesses said. She died of smoke inhalation, the city Medical Examiner's Office said Friday evening.

Fire officials said Diogenes Felix brought out Mary, Sarah's older sister outside from the burning apartment, then tried to go back to get Sarah, but could not re-enter the apartment.

Sarah's older brother, Diogenes Felix, Jr., 12, made it out of the first-story home without injuries about 3:15 a.m., and said later that a candle had been burning on a table inside. The next thing he knew, he said, the apartment was filled with smoke.

On Friday evening, fire officials termed the fire accidental and said it was caused by a candle.

"One of my sisters breathed in a lot of smoke, and my other sister died," Felix, Jr. said at Jacobi Medical Center, where his father was in critical condition Friday afternoon.

Dozens of friends from the family's evangelical church crowded Jacobi's emergency room waiting area to comfort Sarah's mother, Rose Mary Felix, 38. They brought her to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where friends said 6-year-old Mary Felix was in critical condition Friday.

Neighbor Marino Paredes, 38, lives on the fourth floor of the building and said he woke up shortly after 3 a.m. when he heard someone banging on his door. When he opened it, smoke filled his apartment. He ran downstairs, through the dark hallways and outside, where he saw Diogenes and Mary Felix lying on the ground, both badly burned.

"No one could find the 5-year-old," said Paredes, who said the girl's body was recovered about two hours later.

Both Paredes and Philip Brown, 87, who lives on the second floor, said they did not hear any smoke alarms, although apartments have them.

Paredes said the alarms monitor smoke and carbon dioxide, and the building does not have a sprinkler system.

Elsa Felix, Diogenes Felix's sister-in-law, said Sarah Felix was the apple of her father's eye.

"She was his love," Felix said.

The 5-year-old would dress up in her mother's clothes and strut through their apartment like a model, Felix said. She played on the computer, watched cartoons and spent time with her dolls.

Rafaela Guzman, Rose Mary Felix's former sister-in-law, comforted her as she wept inside the Jacobi waiting room. Guzman said the mourning mother could not speak.

"She just cried," Guzman said.

Members of the Felixes' congregation at Iglesia Evangelica Dando Conocer a Cristo said the church played a large role in the family's life. Every Thursday, the Felixes would have members over to their apartment for a prayer session, and Friday nights everyone would gather for a large service at the nearby church.

Ermina Rivero, 80, lives a block away and said she stayed at the Felixes' until about 9 p.m. Thursday night. Their apartment was new, Rivero said, and larger than the one they had lived in next door.

"The husband, he made it beautiful," said Rivero, who said Rose Mary prayed for the building's owners to let her family move into the larger apartment for less money than originally asked.

Rivero looked at the apartment's smashed windows and twisted metal window bars with disbelief.

"I was just here yesterday," she said. "I said, 'I'll see you tomorrow in church.'"