On Thursday, a family decided to take their 27-year-old relative off life support, making him the 13^th victim to die from the tragic Bronx apartment fire, which was started by a 3-year-old last week.  

Holt Francis suffered serious injuries during the fire and his his wife, two children and niece were pronounced dead immediately following the blaze. After a week of remaining on a breathing machine, Francis’s injuries were too critical for him to overcome, reported the Associated Press. 

After the fire, the 27-year-old was taken out of the building on a stretcher and rushed him to the Jacobi Medical Center. On Thursday morning his family made the crucial decision to let him go.

“He has already passed. I don’t know how long he lived after being taken off,” niece Kaidan Blake told the New York Daily News.

He along with his wife, Karen Stewart-Francis, their daughters, Kelesha, 7, and Kylie, 2, and a niece, Shawntay Young, were barricaded inside the bathroom of their fifth floor apartment building at 2363 Prospect Ave., reported the Daily News.

His family tried to keep him alive for as long as possible, yet the prognosis from the doctors forced them to come to terms with his fate.

“Right up to this morning we were still holding on. We were hoping for a different outcome,” she said. “But he was taken off life support this morning. We were hoping he would show some progress,” Blake said.  

Francis died just days before his 28th birthday.