Matilda F. Bruno, 27, telephone operator, died attempting to save Salvatore F. Candido, 24, pipefitter, and Elaine V. and Larry S. Candido, 24 and 22, respectively, from burning, Yonkers, New York, December 2, 1958. At night fire broke out on the ground floor of a frame dwelling where the Candido family was asleep in their apartment on the second floor. In a first-floor bedroom Miss Bruno was awakened by her mother and found the room filling with dense smoke. She led her mother through a smoke-filled hall, from where they could see the glow of flames in the living room, and thrust her outside. Coughing and choking, Miss Bruno then turned and moved back into the smoke in the direction of the stairway leading to the second floor as her mother pleaded for her to leave the house. Meanwhile the Candidos also had been awakened and had found the upper hall filled with smoke. Closing the apartment door, which had an automatic lock, they left the dwelling through a window opening onto the roof of a rear porch. Firemen arrived and, learning that Miss Bruno still was inside, brought the flames under control sufficiently for two men to enter with masks and lights. They found Miss Bruno inert on the floor of the Candido apartment with the telephone beside her. The door of the apartment had been forced open from the hall. Miss Bruno was removed from the dwelling but could not he revived. Several firemen were overcome temporarily before they succeeded in extinguishing the flames, which had gutted the first-floor rooms and charred those on the second floor.
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