by VERONIKA BELENKAYA, NICK McDONELL and MAKI BECKER
A 3-year old Brooklyn boy was killed and his brother and sister critically injured yesterday when a fire ripped through their apartment - trapping them behind a locked steel door, one turn of a key away from safety.
"Get my babies! Get my babies!" the children's hysterical mother, Daisy Cruz, 29, screamed as firefighters raced into the Brownsville building and broke down the apartment door at 7:22 a.m. Joshua Cruz-Maldonado, 3, and his siblings - Jamel Cruz, 9, and Trina Cruz, 11 - were found crumpled together just inside the door. Joshua was sped to Brookdale University Hospital, but could not be saved. "My son is 3 years old. He would be 4 in a month - and I've got to live with that loss," said his anguished father, Kenneth Maldonado, 35. "He's an angel," Maldonado said. The children could not get past the third-floor apartment's steel door, which was held closed by a double lock that required a key to be opened even from the inside. The key to the double-cylinder lock was found on the floor next to the children. The mother's 40-year-old boyfriend was unconscious on a couch near a rear window, firefighters said. "I couldn't get in," sobbed Joshua's grandmother, Millie Camacho, who lives on the first floor of the same Newport St. complex and hurt her wrist trying to open the door of her grandchildren's apartment. Neighbors said they never heard an alarm go off and were alerted to the fire - which apparently ignited when the kids were playing with matches - by other tenants. Daisy Cruz, a home attendant, had left her sleeping children with her boyfriend while she ate breakfast with Joshua's father, grieving relatives said. One by one, firefighters and cops carried the children out of the building. Before an ambulance arrived, cops grabbed Joshua and Jamel and raced them to nearby Brookdale inside separate patrol cars. "They were working on the kids," said neighbor Joanne Alvarez. "They was in bad shape." Relatives rushed to the hospital where a doctor told them the awful news, that "Joshie died," said the boy's half-brother, Kenneth Maldonado Jr., 15. "Everybody started crying - the whole family," he said. "Everyone was hysterical. My dad came over when he heard. Daisy was still screaming. My father tried calming her down." Kenneth said he's devastated by the loss of his little brother. "He didn't get to see life," he said. "My heart broke." Jamel, nicknamed Meemo by his family, was transferred to a burn unit at another hospital for specialized treatment. Trina, who was also burned in the fire, underwent a blood transfusion and was clinging to life, relatives said. Her mother's boyfriend, Al Jesus, 40, was in serious condition. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries. The double-cylinder lock was installed after cops knocked down the door during a raid three years ago, a relatives said. Fire investigators believe the blaze began when the children were playing with a candle and matches in their mother's bedroom. A comforter caught fire and a ceiling fan may have helped spread the flames. Joshua's father, who a relative said is on federal parole for a gun possession conviction, recently moved to Virginia with his brother to start a construction business. He had returned to Brooklyn to take two of his children down South with him for the summer. "I was with him yesterday," he said of Joshua. "I got here on Thursday at 12 a.m. and he's dead. I can't get none of that back. I can't." With Oren Yaniv and Alison Gendar
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