HUNTS POINT — Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark announced her office will open a formal investigation into the landlord of the South Bronx building where two young girls died after a broken radiator filled their room with steam.
Scylee Vayoh Ambrose, 1, and Ibanez Ambrose, 2, were both horrifically burned on Wednesday when the valve on a radiator came off in the room at 720 Hunts Point Ave. where they were sleeping in their crib, filling it with scalding hot steam, police said.
The girls were rushed to Lincoln Hospital and pronounced dead.
On Thursday, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed an autopsy on the children and determined that the girls died of extreme overheating and thermal injuries due to exposure to hot steam.
The building is owned by notorious slumlord Moshe Piller, who was on the public advocate's 100 Worst Landlords list in 2015 and was renting the Ambroses' apartment to the city under its cluster homeless shelter program.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, at a press conference Thursday afternoon, said he wasn’t sure if the building was owned by Piller. In addition, he said, it didn't matter whether the building owner is a notorious slumlord.
“I don’t know if it is or isn’t [Piller] has any bearing on this situation because there was a nonprofit management company who was actually doing the day to day management,” he said.
The mayor said he personally looked at the apartment after the tragedy and didn’t find anything wrong.
In addition, he called the fatal explosion a "freak accident" and said the building was inspected last month, without any issues regarding radiators or its boiler, he said.
