Homeless Parents Open Up For First Time Since Their Daughters Died From Radiator Steam Inside Bronx Apartment
A Homeless Couple Whose Two Daughters Were Killed When A Faulty Radiator Spewed Scalding Steam Into A Room Of A Bronx Apartment Where They Were Staying Broke Their Silence Monday As They Prepared To Bury Their Girls.
“We are touched by the outpouring of love and support from literally Maine to New York and around the country,” heartbroken parents Danielle and Peter Ambrose said in a statement.
“And we are stronger knowing people join us in mourning the loss of our daughters and share our desire to do whatever is possible to ensure that no other family can ever experience this kind of unimaginable pain.”
The small sisters, Scylee, 1, and Ibanez, 2, were napping Dec. 7 when a radiator popped a valve in their Hunts Point apartment, and filled their room with steam, officials said.
The parents, who had come to New York from New England in search of better opportunities, are returning to rural Maine for the Tuesday funeral.
Donations flowed in for the parents from two separate GoFundMe pages. Cops in the NYPD’s 41st Precinct, where the tragedy took place, are hoping to raise $100,000 for the young girls’ family.
Their relatives have blasted the city for placing them in a building owned by a notorious slumlord.
The Bronx DA’s office is probing the building and landlord Moshe Piller. Mayor de Blasio has called the episode a “freak accident.”
A former tenant said a valve popped off the same radiator a year earlier, spewing steam into the same room, and that her children were lucky to be alive.
Ambrose family lawyer Robert Mongeluzzi said the parents are determined to find out why their daughters died.
“We will use every investigative and litigation tool at our disposal to get to the truth on behalf of the Ambrose family, friends, and people of New York,” Mongeluzzi said.
“There is no excuse for this type of abysmal building maintenance, which threatens the safety of everyone in apartment buildings like this.”