A 90-year-old woman is dead after a two-alarm fire ripped through a Morrisania home Tuesday night.

The fire broke out on East 168th Street around 8:50 p.m. The FDNY says they were called for a fire on the second floor.

When firefighters got to the scene, they worked to battle the flames on the first and second floors. It took them just under 45 minutes to get the fire under control.

A woman who lived on the first floor was able to make it out of her home OK, but she said her 90-year-old neighbor who lived upstairs wasn't that lucky. She tells us she was trapped in her home and was well known in the community.

Miss Johnson's son, Richard, says his mother came from a sharecropper’s family in Georgia and never stopped lifting others up.

After moving to New York, she became a teacher, who gave her students her number for homework help. She later helped teens earn their GEDs, find summer jobs and even stepped into activism when parents felt unheard.

News 12 went into the backyard and saw the debris, shattered glass, a burned sofa and a burned wheelchair.

Fire officials say the cause of the fire is under investigation.