Firefighters rescued the girls from a back bedroom after a blaze broke out around 11 p.m. on Saturday, in the Bushwick neighborhood.
Vincente Gomez always eagerly awaited his granddaughters’ arrival on Fridays.
Every other weekend, the girls, Payton Gomez, 7, and Haley Harris, 9, would stay with him in his three-bedroom apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Neighbors said they heard the girls watching TV this weekend and laughing alongside their “Papa.”
But the visit that Mr. Gomez, 53, so cherished ended in tragedy. The two girls were killed in a fire that broke out in the apartment Saturday at about 11 p.m., after they had all gone to sleep.
Firefighters were able to rescue the girls from a bedroom at the rear of the second-floor apartment, the deputy fire chief, James Smithwick, said. Once outside, rescuers tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate the girls, who were pronounced dead at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, the police said.
