NEIGHBOURS paid tribute to a “lovely” man who died after a house fire in Wembley.

Leopold Demetrius, 93, lived in Tudor Court North, Wembley, and sustained serious injuries when the first floor of his house caught fire.

Many people in the street said how friendly Mr Demetrius was and Kirit Patel, 62, said: “He was a lovely, lovely man, he was very nice and he didn’t bother anyone. He would say hello to everyone and was such a lovely fellow. He would never hurt anyone and would never do anything bad, he would always look on the good side of people. I saw him in the morning when I go for my walk. He lost his wife a while ago, poor chap. Everyone on the street knows him as he would say hello to everyone.”

Mr Patel has lived in the area for 48 years and said that Mr Demetrius had also been there for many years.

Firefighters were called to the residential street on Monday December 30 at 6.15am and had the fire under control in less than an hour.

Ambulance crews took the elderly man to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, west London, with chest and arm burns.

He was later transferred to a south-west London hospital where he died.

The fire is not being treated as suspicious by police.

Another neighbour, Aruldevi Thabarupan, 29, who lives opposite the house which caught fire, said: “I took my dad to work and I was coming back when I saw all the ambulances outside. There were two or three families out there. They brought the man out after about 10 minutes and took him to hospital.”

A spokeswoman for the London Ambulance Service said: “We were called to Tudor Court North at 6.20am to reports of a fire. We sent an ambulance crew, a single responder in a car and a duty officer and a hazardous response team. Our staff treated a 93-year-old man who was taken as a priority to St Mary’s hospital with burns to his chest and arms.”

A postmortem is scheduled for Monday January 6.