A heartbroken relative has revealed that a fourth member of a New Jersey family died Thursday after getting infected with the coronavirus during a dinner with relatives.
Vincent Fusco died Thursday morning at a hospital in Freehold, New Jersey, according to his sister Elizabeth Fusco and Roseann Paradiso Fodera, an attorney and relative. He was in his early 50s.
His mother Grace Fusco, 73, died Wednesday night, just hours after her oldest son, Carmine Fusco, a horse racing trainer, died in Pennsylvania.
Rita Fusco-Jackson, 55, the sister of Carmine and Vincent, died last Friday. In her final hours, Grace wasn’t even aware that her two children had already passed away.
In an interview with CNN, the youngest sibling of the Fusco family, Elizabeth, described the heartbreaking moments leading up to the deaths of her family members.
‘It is absolutely surreal. I woke up Tuesday morning [March 10] the baby of 11. My mom called me and said “Lizzie I don’t feel good, Rita don’t feel good, Tony don’t feel good. Can you come help us?” I said absolutely ma,’ Elizabeth explained.
Elizabeth Fusco (left) has revealed that her brother, Vincent Fusco (right) died Thursday after getting infected with the coronavirus last week
Rita Fusco-Jackson (second from left), 55, the sister of Carmine and Vincent, died last Friday. In her final hours, Grace wasn’t even aware that her two children had already passed away
She said when she arrived at her mother’s home, her sister Maria told her to go walk their horses.
‘Maria would literally lay on a ground for those horses so for her to tell me to walk a horse I knew something was wrong,’ Elizabeth told CNN.
Grace Fusco (pictured), 73, died Wednesday night, just hours after her oldest son
Elizabeth went on to say that her mother and eldest sister, Rita, ‘were the root of our lives’.
‘They were everything,’ Elizabeth said before speaking of her two older brothers, who passed away.
‘They were the core of our family since my dad’s been gone,’ she said of her brothers.
Elizabeth then said: ‘It’s like the second we start to grieve about one the phone rings and there’s another person gone, taken from us forever.
‘By the time it settled in our brains about my first sister we got the next call [and] I listened to those doctors and those machines code my mother on the phone when she passed last night [Wednesday].
‘I’ll never get over that but I never wanna hear that again. That’s why we are just begging for help. We never wanna get that call anytime soon ever again because of this. We’re lost.’
Elizabeth said two of her sisters and one brother are still hospitalized. Two of them are in critical condition but one is stable.
Carmine Fusco (left) died five days after his sister, Rita (right) died from the coronavirus. Their mother, Grace, wasn’t even aware that her two children had already passed away
‘I wanna go get my two sisters and brother that are left there [at the hospital] and be like, “We’re gonna be okay,” but I don’t know that that’s true because we have no answers,’ Elizabeth told CNN.
Fodera said Grace died after spending Wednesday ‘gravely ill’ and breathing with help from a ventilator.
Grace died without knowing her two oldest children had passed away before she did.
Four other family members remain hospitalized at CentraState Medical Center in New Jersey, all with COVID-19 – the disease caused by the virus – and four in critical condition.
Another 19 family members are quarantined at their homes and waiting for their test results. Testing for the family members was performed Saturday.
The deaths within the family are connected to John Brennan, 69, a horse trainer who lived in Little Ferry and was the first New Jersey resident to die after testing positive for the virus.
Brennan had reportedly attended a recent Fusco family gathering, according to the state’s health commissioner.
Fodera told The New York Times that the gathering was a routine dinner on a Tuesday.
The deaths within the family are connected to John Brennan (pictured), 69, a horse trainer who lived in Little Ferry and was the first New Jersey resident to die after testing positive for the virus
Worldwide, more than 244,000 people have been infected and more than 10,000 people have died. In the US, there are more than 14,000 confirmed cases in all 50 states and more than 211 deaths
That particular gathering is believed to be the source of the virus.
Brennan was hospitalized at Hackensack University Medical Center before passing away.
He had multiple underlying health conditions, including diabetes, high blood pressure and emphysema, putting him at higher risk of death.
State officials says he was revived on March 9 after going into cardiac arrest, but died on March 10 after suffering a second cardiac arrest.
Worldwide, more than 244,000 people have been infected and more than 10,000 people have died.
In the US, there are more than 14,000 confirmed cases in all 50 states and 211 deaths.