WOODSIDE, Queens — A Queens toddler and his parents have been identified after the family was killed by flooding in their basement apartment Wednesday night when the remnants of Ida walloped the region with record-breaking rain.
According to police, 2-year-old Lobsang Ang, along with his mother, Mingma Sherpa, 48, and father, Ang Lama, 50, were found dead in their Woodside home late Wednesday.
Officers responded around 10 p.m. to a 911 call for flooding in the family’s basement unit in a building near the corner of 64th Street and Laurel Hill Boulevard, but it was too late.
The family’s upstairs neighbor, Deborah Torres, said water rapidly filled her first-floor Queens apartment to her knees as her landlord frantically urged her neighbors below to get out.
But the water was rushing in so strongly that she surmised they weren’t able to open the door to escape.
“I have no words,” she said Thursday. “How can something like this happen?”
At least nine people died in flooded Queens basements, officials said Thursday. Across New York and New Jersey, at least 24 died.
PIX11’s Nicole Johnson contributed to this report.
