A man and a boy perished after leaping from a sixth-floor apartment window in Upper Manhattan on Tuesday night as they tried to flee from the smoke and flames coming from a blaze that raged a story below them. The fire started in a fifth-floor apartment of a building at 611 West 148th Street near Broadway, in Hamilton Heights, around 8:45 p.m. According to Deputy Chief John Sudnik, eight more people, including two firefighters, received minor injuries.

The man who died was 45 years old and he was the 5 or 6 year old dead boy’s godfather, a Fire Department representative said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, while the child was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital in Washington Heights, where his death was pronounced.

“It’s believed that they were together and jumped from one window,” Chief Sudnik said, as quoted by the N.Y. Times. A woman in another room of the sixth-floor apartment also tried to make her way through a window, but could not jump because of window guard bars.

“That probably saved her life,” Chief Sudnik said. Firefighters managed to come in the woman’s rescue.

It is believed that the fire has begun in Apartment No. 58. According to Jim Long, a Fire Department spokesman, the fire alarms were both working in Apartment 58 and Apartment 68, directly above. Investigators are still trying to identify what caused the fire, Mr. Long said.

Chief Sudnik added that the volume of the damage was limited to the only two apartments involved in the fire.