A 74-year-old Whitestone man is dead after a smoldering cigarette caused a fire in his home late Thursday night.
Mario Dimisa was discovered unconscious and unresponsive after firefighters extinguished a blaze inside his home on Riverside Drive near Powells Cove Boulevard shortly after 11:30 p.m. He was pronounced dead at the scene by EMS.
According to FDNY representatives, the fire appears to have been ignited by a cigarette in the ground floor of the two-story home. It is still unclear if the victim was the one who had been puffing away on the fateful fix of tobacco.
The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Dimisa did not have a smoke alarm anywhere in the residence.
