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by THOMAS J. LUECK and DARYL KHAN
A 9-year-old Staten Island boy died Monday after a fire raced through his family's home in Prince's Bay, despite desperate rescue attempts by his father, firefighters and several neighbors.
The boy, Thomas Monahan Jr., was in cardiac arrest when he was removed from a second-floor bedroom of the burning house at 49 Princewood Avenue about 1:30 a.m., the authorities said.
He was taken a few blocks away to Staten Island University Hospital South, where he was revived briefly, then transferred to a burn unit at Staten Island University Hospital North, where he was pronounced dead.
The boy's parents, Thomas and Maria Monahan, and his 8-year-old sister, Gabrielle, were not injured, fire officials said. A Fire Department spokesman, James Long, said Monday that the fire had been traced to a malfunctioning extension cord attached to the basement ceiling.
The death came amid a sequence of mistakes, according to fire officials and several neighbors on the prosperous, neatly landscaped block. Relatives had concluded that the boy was already outside and safe when they fled the burning house, a neighbor said.
As neighbors, some clad only in pajamas, came running to offer help, it was realized that the boy was still inside. Mr. Monahan, blocked by flames from going back in the main entrance, climbed a ladder and tried frantically to break through the second-story window of the boy's bedroom.
"He was screaming, 'Tommy, Tommy, come to the window!'" the neighbor said. "It really tore at your heart to see what he was going through."
Actually, the boy had made his way to his sister's bedroom, where his body was found by a firefighter whose only route of escape was to carry the boy perilously close to the flames that had engulfed the main stairway, fire officials said.
Neighbors described the boy as bright and outgoing, an enthusiastic member of his family's parish soccer team, and a lover of the woods and small animals who liked to go fishing with his father.
"He was a genuinely good kid from a genuinely good family," said the family's pastor, Msgr. Edmund Whalen of St. Joseph-St. Thomas Parish.
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