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Authorities ID Mother, Child Killed In Mount Vernon Blaze

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- A Westchester County community is in mourning after an infant and young mother died in a raging fire overnight.

Marvin Morgan told CBS2 that he lost his wife and baby girl in the blaze.

Police said 11 people lived in the two-story home. But mother Nina Bryant, believed to be in her early thirties, and her 17-month-old daughter Nadia Bryant did not make it out alive, authorities said. 

"I left to go to the store to get something for my wife, and on my way back from the store I received a call that the house was on fire, that they were trapped upstairs," Morgan said.

He says by the time he got home, it was too late.

The fire broke out on the second floor of a home on South 13th Avenue in Mount Vernon at around 3:35 a.m. A total of 35 firefighters from the Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Pelham and Eastchester fire departments responded to the scene, authorities said.

CBS2's Dave Carlin reports that it wasn't long after the fire started that Nina went down to the second floor to rescue her oldest family member, managing to get her out to safety.

Next, she ran to the back of the house and went back inside, knowing that Nadia was still in there as the flames grew more treacherous.

Their bodies weren't recovered from the blaze until around 5 a.m., an hour and a half later after the fire started, CBS2 reported.

One other victim was sent to Montefiore Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

The eight other people that lived in the home were not injured.

"The entire City of Mount Vernon stands with this family in their time of pain and grief," Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Thomas said in a statement Sunday. "The devastating loss of a young mother and child is something no one should ever have to bear."

Neighbors told 1010 WINS the family had been living in the home for decades.

"I just heard the fire trucks, and that's what woke me up," one neighbor said. "My heart goes out to the family."

Morgan says Nina was energetic and his everything, calling her generous and extraordinary both at home and at work as a hospital patient care assistant.

He says his priority must now be his sons.

"They know that their mother and sister are no longer with us," he said.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation. It is not clear whether or not the home had working smoke detectors.

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