A batch of homemade explosives was hurled through a window of a Hollywood home where three women and four children slept early Saturday.
Two of the women were burned when one of the so-called Molotov cocktails flew through a bedroom window and set one's hair on fire; the other tried to stamp out the flames with her hands.
Shirley Brown, 41, and her friend, Carolyn Cummings, 42, were asleep when an explosive shattered the window at 2114 Plunkett Ct. about 4:30 a.m.
The explosive landed in a bed, setting Brown's head, hands, and face ablaze.
''I saw something fly by me, then I heard a pop, and I was on fire,'' said Brown. ``The room lit up like it was Christmas.''
As Cummings used her hands to put out the fire in Brown's hair, both women screamed warnings to their sleeping families.
Cummings' mother, Daisy Sapp, 64, escaped the burning home unharmed, along with Brown's two sons, 11 and 17, Cummings' two sons, 12 and 16, and an unidentified relative.
As the families ran out of the house, a second Molotov cocktail was lobbed into another bedroom.
The fire spread quickly and destroyed everything inside the house, including the medicines Brown takes for lupus.
Cummings had invited Brown and her children to come live at the home about three years ago, when Brown was diagnosed with the disease.
''I'm sick,'' Brown said. ``I can't even take my medication because of what these people did to us.''
She suffered second-degree burns to her face, hands, and shoulders. She was released from Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami on Saturday afternoon.
Cummings, who has lived in the house for 13 years, suffered second-degree burns to her hands. She was treated and released from Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood.
When police searched the backyard of the charred home, they found four to six unused explosives, made out of Budweiser beer bottles and Bacardi rum bottles. They were being dusted for fingerprints.
Police believe the families were purposely targeted.
''It certainly was not a random act of violence,'' Hollywood police Capt. Tony Rode said. ``We believe this was an attempt to severely injure or kill someone.''
Police had no suspects by late Saturday. Cummings and Brown said they didn't know why they would be targeted.
''They tried to kill us,'' Cummings said. ``We don't know who these people are or why they tried to hurt us.''
Cummings' 12-year-old son Jonathan walked through the street barefoot, his shoes destroyed in the blaze.
''We don't have anything now,'' Jonathan said. ``All we have left is what we're wearing.''
The Broward County Chapter of the American Red Cross paid for the families to stay at a hotel Saturday night, and will also supply them with food and clothing. The burned house will be condemned, Rode said.
''I've lived here so long, and now it's all gone,'' said Sapp, who owned the home. ``I don't know what we'll do.''
