WASHINGTON (AP) -- Investigators were looking into whether petty thieves in the Southeast Washington building might have disrupted a gas line, causing an explosion and fire in a Southeast Washington apartment building. A toddler was killed, her mother critically burned and a firefighter was injured.
``The laundry room appears to be where the explosion occurred,'' Alan Etter, a spokesman for the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department, said Wednesday.
``We are investigating the possibility that there were teenagers who had been trying to disrupt the dryers to get in there and get the money out,'' Etter said.
``Last Thursday there was a juvenile who was arrested for apparently trying to break into one of the dryers in the sixth floor laundry room,'' Etter said. Tuesday night's blast occurred in a second floor laundry room, and authorities do not know if the cases are connected. There was no gas leak in last week's incident.
``It's going to take a great deal of time to go through and figure out if those lines were tampered with. If there was something mechanical wrong with them, or if someone did something on purpose _ it's going to take a while to figure that out,'' Etter said.
``We don't know what the source of the ignition was and may never know,'' Etter said.
The explosion did $1.5 million damage to the Marbury Plaza Apartments. An 18-month-old girl was killed and her mother burned over 70 percent of her body. A firefighter who fell down an elevator shaft also remained hospitalized, with what Etter described as serious, but non-life-threatening injuries.
``All of a sudden there was an explosion. Boom! The whole building just shook,'' said resident Constance McDade. She was not surprised by the possibility that troublemaking teens might be to blame.
``The teenagers have taken over,'' McDade said of the building.
About 100 people were displaced. By Wednesday afternoon, about 25 were still being cared for at a Red Cross shelter.
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