A Staten Island smoker with an oxygen tank lit up a cigarette Sunday — and wound up burning himself to death, authorities said.
Richard Aguilar, 51, was smoking in a recliner in his home on Maryland Avenue near Reynolds Street in the Roseland section — his oxygen tank and breathing mask on his left and an ashtray on his right — when the incident occurred at around 12:30 p.m., relatives said.
His lit cigarette ignited his oxygen tank, fatally burning him, his distraught husband, Thomas Krisko, told The Post.
“We were both taking naps,” Krisko said. “I got up from the bed, I came into the living room. I found him in the chair.”
The men were married for a little more than two years, and the nicotine-addicted Aguilar suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a debilitating and potentially deadly breathing ailment, Krisko said.
Emergency workers rushed Aguilar to Staten Island University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead in less than two hours.
“We couldn’t get him to stop smoking,” Krisko said sadly. “They couldn’t resuscitate him. I don’t know what to do without him.”