April 29--STOCKTON -- An apartment kitchen fire might have had a far more tragic ending for six members of a Stockton family if Target hadn't called Kevin Haliburton to come in to work four hours ahead of his early-morning shift Monday.
So he was there to sound the alarm and rush in to help with other neighbors when a fire struck a residence in the 900 block of Porter Avenue.
It ended with Chrystell Staples dropping her five children one by one from a second-story window, then jumped herself to the safety of a beanbag mattress brought over by two quick-thinking brothers who live nearby.
"It was so amazing. It took us like less than one minute to get out of the house," said Staples, 37. Inside the home, the family awoke when its dog started barking and one of Staples' daughters smelled smoke.
The smoke soon filled the three-bedroom, two-story townhouse, and there was no way to get downstairs, Staples said.
"I grabbed all the children I could see, but my youngest son was still asleep. I couldn't see anything. I kept calling his name. After that, I couldn't see, I couldn't breathe. It all took place in 30 to 40 seconds," Staples said.
At the same time, just before midnight, Haliburton, 57, was outside his own apartment complex heading to his car to go to work when his wife called him to come back.
He smelled smoke in the cool night air, then saw flames and "bluish green smoke" pouring out of the second floor of Staples' neighboring townhouse.
He yelled to his wife, Carol Ground Haliburton, 55, to call the Fire Department, which she did.
Kevin Haliburton attempted to break through a wooden fence, one of two between his apartment and Staples' townhouse, and his wife started screaming when she saw her friend Staples standing in the window.
Luckily, Ground Haliburton's screams were loud enough to wake up two brothers who first ran to help break through the fence, then returned with the beanbag mattress and threw it into Staples' backyard directly under her window. The brothers' names were not available.
Another neighbor, Morial Williams, 25, also smelled the smoke after being alerted by a resident and broke through the front door, essentially saving the life of the Staples' dog, which was unable to climb the stairs to get to the family.
Out of nowhere, Staples' youngest son, a twin, finally awoke and crawled into her bedroom.
"I'm in the window preparing to drop the babies first. The community just embraced us and did really good," Staples said.
"I was really frantic last night," she said of the ordeal. She still has no idea what started the fire, since the family went out to dinner and hadn't used anything in the kitchen Sunday night.
Her children -- 8-year-old Alizha Staples and Demario, 14, Armani, 13, Kaylen and Jaylen Chambers, both 7 -- all landed in the beanbag chair safely. Unfortunately for Staples, she missed when she jumped and suffered an ankle injury as well as dozens of "bangs and bruises."
"I'm wheezing. I coughed up black air, but I got oxygen at the hospital, and that helped," she said.
"I was so scared. My brain wouldn't let me inhale anymore. Everything just happened so fast."
Staples couldn't say enough about her neighbors. "Just being in a good community and having people willing to come to our rescue, or else my children would have been charred. The community effort is what saved us," she said.
Her neighbor, Williams, a college student majoring in literature, said "seeing the flames and them up in the window crying -- I'll never forget that. I just sprang into action after that."
Ground Haliburton added that the circumstances of seeing the fire in time, alerting the neighbors and calling the Fire Department -- which responded in minutes and kept the damage to a relative minimum -- "was just meant to be. I've never experienced anything like that before."
Ground Haliburton was able to provide the family with blankets, socks for their bare feet, frozen treats and water before the Red Cross arrived and provided them with a three-day housing voucher.
In the aftermath, the family faces an uncertain future. They were homeless up until November and live on Staples' income as a self-employed businesswoman. And they don't plan on returning to the townhouse once it is made habitable again.
"I am really scared, but I know God is there to protect us," she said. "God has a plan to help us survive."
Contact reporter Joe Goldeen at (209) 546-8278 or [email protected]. Follow him at www.recordnet.com/goldeenblog and on Twitter @JoeGoldeen.
Copyright 2014 - The Record, Stockton, Calif.
