NY Daily News

So the teen punched out a screen window, climbed to the roof and began screaming, "Help! Help!"

The decision may have saved his life.

Inside the Kensington, Brooklyn home, his 12-year-old cousin Bengino (Benji) Dodard, 75-year-old grandmother Marie Vixama and 51-year-old aunt Chrismane Vixama, were dead or dying in an early-morning fire.

Marctyson told the Daily News yesterday he went to bed about 10 p.m. on Sunday in the attic bedroom he shared with his cousin Bengino.

Bengino, who had been Marctyson's interpreter when the older boy arrived from Haiti in 2005, said he planned to stay awake to greet his father who was at the laundry.

Marctyson said he fell asleep but then woke around midnight to find his cousin was still gone.

"I didn't see him," Marctyson said from his bed at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. "I see smoke." Marctyson was confused at first but opened the door to escape. He was hit by a wall of heat.

"There were many flames," he said, his hands and wrists wrapped in bandages to soothe third-degree burns. "I went back into the bedroom and closed the door."

The conditions inside the room had deteriorated, he explained, and he was getting panicky. "I couldn't breathe," he said. "There was a lot of smoke."

As the smoke grew thicker, he punched out the screen, he said.

He climbed to the third-story roof and began screaming for help. He could see smoke and flames pouring out of the home's windows, he said.

A man passing below heard his cries and shouted back: "'I cannot reach you,'" Marctyson recalled. "'You have to slide down so I can get to you.'"

The stranger ran up a stairway to the home's second-floor veranda, which had been built after a fire a few years earlier.

At the same time, Marctyson shimmied down a post and onto the veranda's roof. He began hanging his legs over the edge until he could put his feet onto the man's shoulders, he said.

He suddenly realized how much his hands were burning. The stranger went to find water.

Several people called 911 about the fire shortly after midnight, including Bengino, and firefighters were on the scene.

Firefighters said there was no smoke alarm in the attic.

Bengino's dad, Berne Dodard, who owns 251 E. 19th St., was issued violations for illegal partitions in the cellar. Investigators were also looking into whether the attic was an illegal conversion.

Marctyson, a sophomore at John Dewey High School, said he wanted to send a message to the stranger.

"I want to thank you for what you did," he said. "Thanks for saving my life."

Firefighters rescued his father, Marc Vixama, who was sleeping on the second floor.

He had a message in his native tongue for the man who saved his son: "Merci."

Marctyson said his cousin was his best friend. "I'm going to miss him a lot."