Six Ghanaians perish in Bronx inferno

Six Ghanaians lost their lives in a freak fire accident in the Bronx, on December 28, 2017. They were among thirteen people who died in the inferno when a 3-year old boy who was playing with the burners of a gas range ignited a fire.

According to New York City Fire Department officials, in an apparent panic or attempt to get out with her children, the mother of the 3-year old left the door of her apartment on their 1st floor rental unit ajar. That exacerbated the rapid spread of fire upwards. Two of the six dead Ghanaians were siblings. In an interview with U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Evans Twumasi, a sibling of two of the dead, his senior brother, Justice Opoku, 54 died with their roommate, Solomon Donkor, 49, in Apartment 19 of the 4th floor unit. He said his junior brother Gabriel Sarkodie, 48, and the two children of Solomon Donkor, 49, Hannah Adomah Donkor, 17, and William Donkor, 12, died later at the Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx.

Both children arrived in the U.S. some few months ago. The 6th Ghanaian, Emmanuel Mensah, 28, was a U.S. National Guard who’d come home for the Christmas holidays. Briefing Amandla, Ghana’s Consular General in the New York Consulate Professor Samuel Amoako, said the death of the six Ghanaians is a shared-loss to the entire community in the US and beyond. The Consulate spearheaded efforts in bringing the Ghanaian community together  to mourn, sympathize, and console the grief-stricken family.

Posted by admin on Jan 17 2018. Filed under top stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry