79-year-old woman dies in New Jersey house fire
WYCKOFF, N.J. -- Police say a woman was killed in a house fire in Bergen County on Sunday.
She was lovingly known by her niece as Aunt Gina. Seventy-nine-year-old Virginia D'Amilio Ingenito lived in the Meer Avenue home in Wyckoff with her son and two grandsons.
Calls came in at around noon Sunday about heavy flames and smoke coming from the back of the house. Firefighters found Ingenito unresponsive. She was rushed to a nearby hospital where she died.
"To be here, it's like... I can't put it into words. It's so tragic," niece Agnes Mariella-Zimmer said.
Her niece shares her aunt suffered from dementia and may have been cooking at the time. She was home alone.
At least 150 firefighters across Wyckoff and several neighboring towns responded. Two suffered minor injuries.
"This did go to a third alarm due to the size of the house and the volume of fire that crews were met with," Wyckoff Assistant Fire Chief Joseph Alvarez said.
Flames spread up through the first and second floors and traveled up to the attic. The doors and windows are now being boarded up. They were busted through, along with the roof, to prevent gas build-up inside.
"It helps the firefighters to locate down victims, and it also helps them to find the fire quicker," Alvarez explained.
D'Amilio Ingenito immigrated to the United States in the late '50s and worked as a hairstylist. She owned a hair salon in Totowa she named after her son Charlie.
"She worked very hard for her son to put him through college and he became a lawyer," Mariella-Zimmer said. "He was loved by everyone."
If there's one thing her niece is taking away from this, she says, "Love your mother, love your parents because that's what you take with you."
Due to the magnitude of the fire, the Bergen County prosecutor's office is stepping in to investigate its exact cause.