A woman and two children died after being pulled from a burning house late Wednesday after a space heater in a locked room started a fire, authorities said.
The victims are a woman in her 70s, a 4-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl. The children were pronounced dead at 11:50 p.m. Wednesday at St. Louis Children's Hospital. The woman, 78, died at 12:20 a.m. Thursday at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
The home was engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived at about 10 p.m. Wednesday. Firefighters pulled the victims, unconscious, from the second floor of the home in the 1000 block of Roth Avenue.
Four other people, including a child, a woman and her adult son, escaped the fire.
The small brick home has two dormers on the second floor and the vinyl siding on that section is charred from the smoke. A child's plastic tricycle sat in the fenced back yard near a shed.
"He smelled the smoke and realized it was coming from the sunroom," Long said Thursday morning. "The door to the sunroom was locked. His mother went upstairs to get a key to come back to open the door, but by that time all hell broke loose."
He said there was no telling how long the fire had burned before the man noticed it. There were no smoke detectors in the house, Long said.
The man tried to get to the second floor, where his grandmother, niece and nephew were, but was forced back by smoke and flames, Long said.
The man and his mother, Wanda Clopton, got out safely. She owns the home. A girl about 10 years old also got out safely.
About 30 firefighters from several departments helped fight the two-alarm fire. They had it under control in about 40 minutes, Long said.
"It's hard any time you have a fatality, but especially hard when it's a child," the fire chief said. "Some of the firefighters were visibly shaken. "
"They were just lovable, and well-cared-for," Natasha Yancy, Wanda Clopton's niece, said of the children. Yancy is 30 and lives in University City.
Long said an investigation was underway to determine whether combustibles, such as drapes, were too close to the space heater, or if the space heater was faulty.
He said no home should be without smoke detectors. He planned to have crews go around the neighborhood Thursday to offer to install free smoke detectors.
On Thursday morning Darrick Johnson, a family friend, put three stuffed animals on the front porch and said a silent prayer as he surveyed the damage.
Johnson said "it's sad to see these young kids passing away." Johnson said the older woman who died was having trouble getting around. "She was a sweetheart," he said, "always there when you needed her."
Johnson said space heaters should be safer.
"How are we supposed to keep warm?" he asked.
