Boy Playing With Lighter Sparked Fatal Pittsburgh Fire
Source The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
A 6-year-old boy playing with a lighter sparked a fire that killed a man and a woman on Wednesday in a third-floor Friendship apartment.
Firefighters found the unidentified victims in a rear bedroom of the three-story apartment building on South Graham Street.
"It appears they were overcome by smoke from the fire," Pittsburgh police Lt. Kevin Kraus said.
The youngster lit a piece of paper on fire in the living room of the second-floor apartment, Kraus said. The boy put the paper on a pillow on a couch, then threw the pillow behind the couch when it caught fire. The pillow ignited the couch, the lieutenant said.
The child and his mother tried to extinguish the flames before calling 911 about 1:45 a.m., Kraus said.
The boy might have started fires before, "and we're trying to determine the extent of that," Kraus said. He did not identify the child or his mother and said it's too early to determine whether charges are warranted.
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office is working to identify the victims.
A firefighter suffered a leg injury, fire Chief Darryl Jones said.
Property owner Robert Dax said the mother and her three young sons moved into the apartment in July.
Rozalyn Jackson, 64, who lives in the first-floor apartment, tried to call the mother when she heard noises upstairs, and went up to ring the woman's bell when she could not reach her by phone. She saw the woman and her children coming down the stairs.
Both women tried but could not reach their third-floor neighbor, Jackson said.
"We tried to ring her bell," she said through tears. "Her bell didn't work. We tried to get her. We couldn't get her."
Dax said he did not know the man who died in the fire, but he was not a tenant. The woman had lived there for more than six years, having moved to Pittsburgh from the African country of Togo to be closer to her brother, Dax said.
"She just came and thought things were going to be better here," Dax said. "She was a great tenant."
Copyright 2012 - The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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