WEBSTER, Mass. -- A Webster firefighter says he feared the worst when he discovered two unresponsive infants lying on a bed in a smoky apartment after their mother abandoned them and left food cooking on the stove.
"It was a scary thought seeing them both lying there, you start thinking the worst right away," said Assistant Fire Chief Robert Gryncewicz, who said the twin 2-month-old babies were lying on an adult bed when he responded to the Saturday afternoon fire. "I picked them up and started carrying them outside."
The children's mother, Christina Page, 28, will be arraigned today in Dudley District Court on three counts each of permitting bodily injury to a child and wanton reckless behavior causing risk to a child. Police say she left the 2-month-old twins and her 3-year-old boy alone in her Webster apartment with food cooking on the stove. Gryncewicz said when he arrived, a children's show was playing on the living room TV.
It is believed Page had been gone for about an hour before help arrived.
The 911 call for smoke in the Myrtle Avenue apartment came in at 4:08 p.m. Saturday. Page's second-floor landlord, Anne Kuria, entered the first-floor apartment because she saw smoke and knew that Page had young children. Gryncewicz said Kuria put out the kitchen fire with a wet towel and carried the 3-year-old boy to safety. She told firefighters there might be more children inside.
Gryncewicz was quick to call Kuria a hero.
"(People) always make the police and firefighters look like the heroes, but that landlord deserves a lot of credit," he said. "If she didn't do what she did, we could be looking at three deaths instead of everybody," being OK.
The children were treated at a hospital for smoke inhalation and were expected to be turned over to the custody of the Department of Social Services.
Republished with permission of The Boston Herald.
