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Two Dead, Firefighter Injured in Pennsylvania Fire

Feb. 8, 2012

Neighbors tried but failed to reach a Friendship woman who died in an apartment fire that authorities believe a child may have started early Wednesday morning. A man also in the apartment died later.

Source The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Feb. 08--Neighbors tried but failed to reach a Friendship woman who died in an apartment fire that authorities believe a child may have started early this morning.

Firefighters found the woman and an unidentified man in her apartment on the third floor of a house subdivided into apartments in the 100 block of South Graham Street, Pittsburgh fire Chief Darryl Jones said.

The man died at West Penn Hospital and the woman died at the scene, a spokesman with the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office said. Official identification of the two is pending notification of next of kin.

The fire was reported at about 1:45 a.m. and appears to have started in the second-floor apartment, Jones said.

Rozalyn Jackson, 64, who lives in the first-floor apartment, was told by the woman in the second-floor apartment that her 6-year-old son started the fire. Jackson tried to call the mother when she heard noises upstairs early this morning, and left her apartment to ring the mother's bell when she couldn't reach her by phone.

"She was coming down the stairs with her kids and said she had called the fire department," Jackson said. "I looked out and that's when I saw all the fire coming out."

Jackson said both women tried to reach their neighbor on the third floor, but couldn't.

"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."

Jackson described the third-floor tenant as a nice woman who worked every day.

"She was friendly," Jackson said. "She didn't bother nobody."

Property owner Robert Dax said the woman moved to Pittsburgh from Togo, a country on the western coast of Africa, and had lived in the apartment for more than six years, he said.

"She just came and thought things were going to be better here," Dax said. "She was a great tenant."

One firefighter suffered a leg injury, Jones said. He said the injury was not life-threatening but didn't know the firefighter's condition.