Brooklyn Mother Charged After Daughter Dies in Apartment Fire

A mother who allegedly went to party and left her 2-year-old daughter home alone during a fire that claimed the child’s life was previously being investigated by Administration for Children’s Services.

Leila Aquino, 20, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and reckless endangerment, police told WPIX.

The fire started shortly before 7 a.m. Tuesday in a second floor apartment on Monroe Street near Patchen Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“I would have came and watched my goddaughter”. She said, “Where’s my baby?”

“I’m just here just like a dream, it’s like a nightmare, like a nightmare to me”, he said.

Firefighters returned to conduct a secondary search and found Kaleenah Muldrow’s lifeless body under a bed around 9:43 a.m.

“That’s what she said… but who is to say there was really a sitter?” It was initially reported that Aquino was working at a strip club in Queens, but now police sources say she skipped her shift; PIX 11 reports, “Police say Aquino left her toddler home alone, while she ditched work at CityScapes Strip club and went to party with her new boyfriend”. She said she works as a home health aide, just as her mother does. The money that she earned from a night at the strip club should have been more than enough to hire a babysitter for the evening.

The child’s father, Kason Muldrow, said he was unsure if his daughter was left alone at the time of the blaze.

“That’s beyond sad”, said one neighbor.

The great-grandfather of the child, who lives in the basement, told investigators that he heard and saw the mother leave that night around 11:30 p.m. and assumed the child was with her.

A spokesman for ACS said privacy laws preclude him from addressing any involvement the agency may or may not have had with a family. The city’s medical examiner will determine the girl’s cause of death.