A Brooklyn police lieutenant broke down in tears in court Tuesday as he recalled hearing two officers screaming for help while trapped in a deadly blaze alleged caused by a “bored’’ teenage firebug.
“It was very chaotic and frantic. We were so close, but we couldn’t get to them,’’ NYPD Lt. Charlton Telford testified.
“There was a feeling of helplessness,” Telford said, wiping away tears. “You [could] still hear them screaming over the radio that they needed help.
We kept going up the stairs to try and help them,” but the fire was “too dangerous for [other] cops to go up.’’
Telford said that by the time he and other officers saw the two downed cops who had been trapped in the 2014 blaze in a Coney Island housing project, he didn’t even recognize one of them, his friend, Rosa Rodriguez — because she was so covered in soot.
“I didn’t believe it was her,’’ he said.
Rodriguez barely survived, suffering severe lung damage. Her NYPD partner, Dennis Guerra, died.
The pair had ridden the elevator up to the 13th floor after getting a report of a fire and became trapped in the smoke and flames as the lift’s doors opens.
Marcell Dockery, then 16, allegedly admitted to being “bored’’ when he lit a mattress in the hallway ablaze, sparking the deadly fire.
Prosecutors showed photos of the suspect’s sooty scarred hands right after the tragedy.
A building resident who nearly died in the fire also wept as she recalled the horror.
Noelia Torres described how she, her paraplegic brother and 7-year-old nephew woke up to several loud bangs on her door and an inferno outside her apartment.
“I went to the door and looked through the peep hole. There was a bright light like someone was shining a light inside,” she said.
“I pulled it open. It was like a back draft of fire.”
During her testimony, Torres broke down in tears as prosecutors played her 911 call.
“There is a big fire outside my door!,” she says on the tape. “We can’t get out the house! … It’s coming in, please hurry up!”
Torres said Dockery apparently panicked at the out-of-control flames and repeatedly screamed, “Get out!’’ to her.
Crime Scene Unit Detective Carlos Pantoja testified that when he photographed Dockery’s clothes at the 61st Precinct, he noted the smell of soot, which was likely “from the flames.”
Dockery, now 18, faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.