Brother's electric scooter catches fire in New York City, kills 8-year old girl

Electric scooter fires have become quite a frequent issue in recent times. In New York City, an electric scooter battery sparked a fire that killed an 8-year-old girl, Stephanie Villa Torres. It was at least the third such incident in a little over a year that a scooter battery has killed someone. The latest incident took place on Saturday at around 7:30 a.m. at a home in Queens, as reported by New York Post. The little girl couldn't survive the fire and was declared dead at a hospital while her father and 18-year-old brother were treated for burns and smoke inhalation, officials informed the news portal. A fire department spokesperson stated that the fire was caused by a lithium battery in an electric scooter.

Recalling the frantic but futile effort to save the girl, resident Daniel Calle, said, “The firefighter took the girl out first. He was carrying her in his arms. She looked like she was asleep.”

The landlord shared that the electric vehicle had been recently bought by the family for one of the little girl’s teenage brothers.

The dead girl had reportedly suffered smoke inhalation and was pronounced dead at New York Presbyterian Hospital of Queens.

In an earlier incident, a woman and a 5-year-old girl were killed on August 3 in Harlem by a fire caused by a scooter battery. Before that a fire linked to an e-scooter killed a 9-year-old boy in Queens in September 2021.

Recently, eight people have died and several injured after a massive fire broke out in a showroom in Secunderabad, Telangana.

According to a NDTV report quoting the sources, a short circuit occurred due to overcharging of the EVs at the basement of the showroom where EVs were stored and spread on the upper floors of the building which had several hotel rooms. As many as eight people have died because of asphyxiation caused by the smoke. However, the cause of the fire is still being invetigated.