A three-alarm fire raging through a Washington Heights apartment early yesterday killed its sole occupant, an 87-year-old woman who had lived there for decades and seldom had visitors, according to neighbors.
The doorman of the 15-story building on West 190th Street between Cabrini Boulevard and Fort Washington Avenue called 911 at 3:27 a.m., authorities said.
Firefighters found Helen Theoharis dead in the bedroom of her second-floor unit as smoke wafted through the halls.
The blaze was extinguished by 4 a.m., said an FDNY spokesman.
Neighbors said the bed-ridden Theoharis had a home-health attendant, who had gone home at the end of her shift and left Theoharis alone with a phone and a radio.
Fire marshals said initially that the fire did not appear to be suspicious.
The city medical examiner will pronounce an official cause of death.
According to a neighbor who declined to give her name, the flames were contained in the apartment but smoke made its way to the third and fourth floors.
No residents, however, needed to be evacuated, officials said.
“I was about to evacuate the building with my kid, but a firefighter wearing a mask told me I didn’t have to,” one of the neighbors said.