QUEENS VILLAGE — Four family members, ages 2 to 20, killed in a massive house fire last month were remembered Saturday at their funeral as the city still investigates what sparked the blaze.
Hundreds of mourners — many wearing T-shirts with collages of the victims — filled New Greater Bethel Ministries on Jamaica Avenue in Queens Village for the hours-long homecoming service for Chayce Lipford, 2, Rashawn Matthews, 10, Jada Foxworth, 16, and Destiny Dones, 20, who died in the fire that consumed the wood-frame home at 112-15 208th St. on April 23.
Family friend Melody Edwards, 17, who was visiting at the time of the fire and perished inside, was buried in a separate funeral last week, officials said.
Programs handed out shared obituaries of the victims, along with heartbreaking messages from their loved ones.
“I can’t make you smile no more, I can’t hear you laugh, I can’t hear you cry,” Chayce's mother, Shanikqua Matthews, wrote in a love letter to her son. “I can’t hear you say mommy a thousand times.”
Chayce was just learning his ABCs at his day care center, singing it whenever he could, his family wrote. His best friend was TT, the family’s dog.
His first word was “Gene,” for his adult cousin, Eugene, who escaped the fire by jumping from a second floor roof.
A painting of Chayce Lipford and Rashawn Matthews, depicted as angels. (DNAinfo/Katie Honan)
“It was a terrible day for this family, a terrible day for this department,” Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro, who attended the funeral, said. “We grieve with this family.”
Investigators are still searching for a cause of the fire, and have narrowed it down to a few possible causes, he added. The home did not have any working smoke alarms, officials added.
Rev. Al Sharpton, who was asked to speak at the funeral by a family member, said the city should "embrace this family" throughout their devastation.
"This trauma is something that could happen to any of us," he said.
Grieving relatives poured out onto Jamaica Avenue as the caskets were carried into hearses. A long line of motorcycles drove around the block, revving up a cloud of smoke before and after the funeral.
A cousin of the family is comforted before the funeral for four relatives who died in a house fire in Queens Village on April 23, 2017. (DNAinfo/Katie Honan)
Matthews Jr., known as Rashawn, was a talented singer — who, as a baby, could only calm down when Marvin Sapp’s “Never Would Have Made It” was played, according to his obituary.
He was a student at P.S. 136 and loved to play softball and bowl, completing his season at the bowling alley the night before he died.
“How do I say goodbye to you?," his mother, Dajuana Green Matthews, wrote to her son, saying he died “so the angels in heaven can hear you sing.”
Jada Foxworth was a cheerleader at The Women’s Leadership School of Queens. The squad competed in an international competition in Florida — which was “one of the greatest, and exciting times in her life.”
Mom Tamara Foxworth — who lost two daughters in the fire — wrote that her 16-year-old was always an angel, but was now in heaven.
Her older daughter, Desiny Dones, who was known as Mumu, graduated from Henkels and McCoy, where she was working in career development.
“Destiny was young with an old soul, very wise and extremely lovable,” her obituary said.
She was known as a protector of her family and friends, protecting sister Jada “even in their last moment."
“”I hear you now saying, ‘Ma I got Jada,’ ‘Ma I got this,’” her mother wrote. “I’ll look for you among the stars, and each dawn’s pastel sky.”
All four victims were buried at Pinelawn Cemetery on Long Island.
