Girl, 11, Is Killed in Brooklyn Fire

The girl, Shirr Teved, was found unconscious inside an apartment building in the Midwood neighborhood, police said. She was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

The child’s death came toward the end of a frigid day on which at least three other people died in connection with separate fires across New York City, according to officials.

About 10:20 p.m. Monday, firefighters received a call about a blaze in a three-story building at 761 Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, said a firefighter, Brian Fitzgerald.

The fire was on the first floor of the building, Fitzgerald said, and 25 units and 106 firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians responded to the scene.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, he added.

Shirr was pulled from the building and taken to Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, where she was pronounced dead, the police said.

One firefighter, who had smoke inhalation, was taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan. He arrived with “serious, life-threatening injuries” but was later upgraded to stable condition, Fitzgerald said.

On Tuesday morning, the smell of smoke hung in the air outside the split-residence building. Ash and fire debris coated cars still parked in the driveway, and bicycles, luggage, shelving and a small pink scooter sat in a heap behind police tape.

A woman entering the adjoining unit Tuesday morning said she was awake when the fire started.

“I got everybody in my house out,” the woman, who declined to give her name, said as she stood in the doorway. Her home was intact.

Madelyn Novitsky, a substitute teacher at Yeshivah Ohel Moshe in Bensonhurst, where Shirr attended school, described her as a joyful, energetic child who loved animals.

Novitsky said she served as an after-school tutor and mentor to the 11-year-old, who often walked Novitsky’s dog and played with her cat. Novitsky also took Shirr to Sabbath dinners and to temple.

The two were supposed to meet again for tutoring on Tuesday, Novitsky said. They planned “to watch ‘Madeline’ cartoons and to do homework.”

On Monday night, she said, she ran outside in pajamas when she learned that Shirr’s house was burning.

Around 11 p.m., she spoke by phone with Shirr’s mother, who was not at home when the fire broke out, she said.

“She’s a beautiful girl,” Novitsky said of Shirr on Tuesday, as she looked at the wreckage of Shirr’s home.

She also said that Shirr, a fourth grader, loved field trips to the beach at Coney Island. Her strongest memory of Shirr was the child “doing somersaults all in a row from the boardwalk to the beach shore,” she said.

“I told her not to do it but she did it anyway, with sheer delight,” Novitsky said.

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Andrew Wolpin, a neighbor, said Shirr used to attend the Shalsheles Bais Yaakov school in Borough Park.

Wolpin’s niece, a teacher at the school, knew the girl before she transferred to another school, he said.

“My niece describes her as a happy, sweet girl,” said Wolpin, who added that he had not met Shirr himself.

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The Midwood fire was one of at least four deadly fires that took place in the city Monday.

For the last 14 years, fewer than 100 people have died every year in fires in New York City, according to Fire Department data. Last year, 66 people died in fires.

One of Monday’s fires was being investigated as a homicide. Around 3:20 a.m., a fire tore through a rowhouse in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood.

After that fire was brought under control, firefighters found a man, L. Antonio Litman, unconscious with puncture wounds in his head and back, officials said.

Early Tuesday, police said that the death had been ruled a homicide. Earlier, authorities had said they were looking into the possibility of a robbery.

Authorities were also investigating a fire in Queens, where a man who has not been identified was found dead in a building under construction, and a blaze in the Bronx, in which an 85-year-old man was found inside his apartment in the Co-op City neighborhood about 2:45 a.m.

Separately, hundreds of firefighters spent hours working to control a five-alarm fire in Staten Island on Monday. The fire began in one home and eventually tore through six buildings on Monday afternoon, according to the Fire Department.

Ten firefighters and one other person were injured in that fire, officials said. The injuries were not life-threatening.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .