KANSAS CITY, Mo. --
A father and twin 4-year-olds died in a fire late Tuesday night in the 2500 block of Mersington Avenue, authorities said.
Stefinny Washington was able to escape the fire, but her husband and children did not.
"How am I going to do anything? I don't know, I don't know," said Washington, who was visibly distraught.
She said she was asleep at about 10:30 p.m. when one of her twins came into her room and told her the house was on fire.
"I woke up, tried to wake my husband up (but) he wouldn't move. I went to go see where the fire was -- I was going to try to put it out, and I couldn't, so I grabbed both of my kids' arms and went toward my bedroom window, and they let me go and all I heard was, 'Mommy.' That was it; that's all I heard was, 'Mommy,'" Washington told KMBC's Peggy Breit.
Neighbor Erma Donelson brought over a ladder to help Washington escape. Donelson said she wanted to enter the house to save the children, but firefighters got inside first.
"You're trying to help somebody else, and it's not enough. I tried to save them babies -- couldn't do it, it was too late," Donelson said.
When firefighters arrived, they found the children, Nakita and Nathaniel Jr., and their father, Nathaniel Washington, unconscious in a second-floor bedroom. The three were taken to hospitals, where they died.
The twins would have been 5 in July.
"They're with God now, and he needed them more than we did," said Edie Duncan, the children's grandmother.
Investigators believe the children may have accidentally started the fire by playing with matches or a lighter.
Breit reported that the home was equipped with smoke detectors and that the maintenance man had put in fresh batteries two months ago, but they had been removed.
