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by JEFF KEARNS AND LINDSAY FABER
Three generations of an immigrant family from Africa were killed early yesterday morning when a two-alarm blaze sent their Queens Village house up in flames, fire officials said.
Fire investigators were examining an air conditioner and an extension cord as possible culprits of the two-story house fire at 102-31 216th St. that claimed the lives of Alisa Shepherd, 2, her mother, Melvina Shepherd, 23, and grandmother, Mary Ann Shepherd, 46.
The Shepherds were among about 13 extended family members and four generations from Sierra Leone living in the house. Some slept on mattresses in the dining room, and others crowded into the basement and a backyard garage, officials said.
The house did not have smoke detectors, delaying notification after the fire broke out after 5:45 a.m. in the dining room, supervising Fire Marshal Randall Wilson said. Wilson said the family tried to extinguish the blaze before calling the Fire Department.
He said flames quickly shot through all of the mattresses in the house.
"Everything was used as a bedroom in this place," he added.
Neighbors who knew the family and had seen them as recently as Monday, when they went shopping and planned to watch a movie, were shaken by the deaths, especially of the little girl, who had just learned to talk.
Monica Codrington, a next-door neighbor who baby-sat Alisa nearly every day, said she heard a noise at her door at 5:50 a.m.
"One of the cousins was banging on my door. He said, 'Please call 911, my house is on fire!'" Codrington said. "When I looked up, the whole house was on fire. I am in shock.... It's like my own child."
Witnesses said the baby's father, Melvin Shepherd, 26, had come running out of his house, screaming.
"Three of them are inside!" the witnesses said he shouted of his daughter, wife and mother.
Seven people were home at the time of the fire, and of the four who managed to escape, one was injured after he jumped from a second-floor window.
"He was bleeding from the mouth," neighbor George Johnson, 56, said of Yull Shepherd, 19.
Another neighbor, Earl Williams, 62, said he heard at least two explosions.
"The place was already engulfed," Williams said. "The place was in dense smoke."
Codrington said that Melvina Shepherd worked as a housekeeper at a hotel in Manhattan and that the family had been in the house for six or seven years after emigrating from Africa. The family was prepared to move to a new house in Jamaica next month.
Instead, the survivors will spend the coming days at a hotel near LaGuardia Airport.
The fire was under control by 6:45 a.m. Of the 130 firefighters who fought it, nine suffered minor injuries at the scene.
Staff writer Denisa R. Superville contributed to this story.
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