On April 6, 2014, P.O. Dennis Guerra and P.O. Rosa Rodriguez were returning from taking a prisoner to central booking when they heard a radio call about a fire at an apartment building at 2007 Surf Avenue in Coney Island. Though not regular partners, they just happened to be passing that building when the emergency call came through. It was 12:28:06 and the caller reported the fire had started on the 13th floor. Guerra and Rodriguez were assigned to PSA #1, and the 18-story Unity Towers building was a NYCHA residence.
The Officers reached the building in less than a minute, before other first responders. Because they saw no flames or smoke on the ground level, they immediately went into the elevator to see who was upstairs. During the minutes before they reached the 13th floor, another call came into dispatch from an apartment dweller who related that smoke was filling her residence and she heard yelling in the hallway. Within seconds, another caller reported that people were screaming out of their windows for help. By 12:31, the first firefighters arrived on the scene and EMS was dispatched.
Before they even reached the 13th floor, Guerra and Rodriguez made a radio call informing dispatch it was getting impossible to see or breath as the black smoke filled their elevator. The transmission included the desperate message, “We don’t know where we are. We’re in an elevator. We don’t know what floor we’re on. We can’t breathe! We can’t see!” Surveillance cameras clocked the time at 12:37 p.m. And, when the door opened, the smoke, heat, and flames engulfed them. They collapsed choking on the black fumes. Both Officers passed out, unconscious.
At approximately 12:45 p.m., FDNY firefighters landed on the 13th floor. They found Guerra and Rodriguez in the hallway, unresponsive. The firefighters transported them immediately by elevator back down to the street where EMS was waiting. By 1:13 p.m., Guerra was rushed to Coney Island Hospital, and then airlifted to Jacobi Hospital in The Bronx, where he lingered in critical condition. Rodriguez was transported to Lutheran Hospital in Brooklyn, and then to Cornell Medical Center’s Burn Unit in Manhattan, where she was also placed in a hyperbaric chamber, diagnosed with carbon monoxide poisoning and severe smoke inhalation.
The fire that had engulfed the windowless hallway had originated from an abandoned mattress. Responding firefighters simultaneously extinguished the inferno and rescued the injured Police Officers. The 13th floor hallway of the NYCHA building contained seven coats of oil-based paint that served as an accelerant to the fire. All that remained of it was a horrifying and toxic charred tunnel.
36-year old P.O. Rosa Rodriguez remained in critical condition. She had been on the force only three years and had four children anxiously awaiting news about her condition. But, P.O. Guerra remained in a coma, registering limited brain activity, and doctors warned his family to prepare for the worst. On April 9, 2014, at 6:50 a.m. at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, he passed away. He had never regained consciousness. He was posthumously promoted to Detective, first grade by Police Commissioner William Bratton. Guerra was the first NYPD Officer to die in the line of duty from smoke inhalation since 1987. At the time of his death, Dennis Guerra was 38 years old.
Dennis Guerra is the son of retired Det. Denitor Guerra, whom he followed into the NYPD, and who retired as a second grader in September 2004, from the Queens Homicide Squad. His son Dennis and his wife Cathy have four children. Dennis’ mother Miriam was a former NYPD School Safety Officer. Read the full obituary about Det. First Grade Dennis Guerra in the story that ran in the DEA’s Gold Shield magazine’s Fall 2014 edition, along with the Detectives of the Month story about the arson case that took his life. Click on the link below:
Courage Under Fire The Gold Shield Fall 2014
