#NYCHA faces another wrongful death suit for Harlem fire that killed 6

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Photo of the Pollidore family seen on a GoFundMe page
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The city’s housing authority is facing another wrongful death suit for the fatal fire that killed a mother and her four kids in a Harlem apartment last year, new court papers show.

Andrea Pollidore, 45; her daughters Nakiyra, 11, Brooklyn, 6; sons Andre, 8, and Elijah, 3; and family friend Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, 33, all died in her fifth-floor apartment at the seven-story New York City Housing Authority building on West 142nd Street on May 8, 2019.

Earlier in August, family for Pollidore, Nakiyra, Brooklyn and Abdul-Rauf filed two wrongful death suits against NYCHA claiming that the apartment in the Frederick E. Samuels Houses was a death trap.

Now, another similar suit has been filed against the agency by a family of claiming NYCHA’s negligence caused their deaths, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed by Andre’s and Elijah’s dads, Benjamin Grant and Jean Belot, respectively.

“The fire and the injuries resulting therefrom and death was caused solely and wholly by reason of the negligence of the defendants,” the court papers charge.

The apartment didn’t have a series of safety features including sprinklers, an accessible fire escape, a working smoke detector or a hood over the stove — which is pertinent as the fire started in the kitchen, the court documents allege.

The fathers’ lawyer, Robert Vilensky, told The Post that the apartment configuration is flawed because the fire escape is just a few feet from the front door and the family would have had to pass through the kitchen, where the fire started, to reach either exit.

“I honestly think that NYCHA has to do an evaluation because of what happened in this fire so it doesn’t happen to other people,” Vilensky said noting that many other NYCHA apartments have similar configurations.

NYCHA spokesperson Barbara Brancaccio told The Post the agency, “does not comment on pending litigation.”