ERIE, Pa. – Three of five children killed in a fire at a home child-care center in Pennsylvania were the children of a volunteer firefighter who was responding to another call, an official said Monday.
Luther Jones' two daughters and a son were trapped in a blaze in the lakeside city of Erie while he was responding to a call for what turned out to be a malfunctioning alarm, said Joe Crotty, volunteer fire chief in Lawrence Park Township.
The children haven't been formally identified, but the Erie Fire Department reported the dead range in age from 8 months to 7 years. The owner was hospitalized after the fire Sunday. Erie fire officials say the children were staying overnight at a house that had been turned into a day-care center.
The mother of Jones' three children, Shevona Overton, who said she is also the mother of another child killed, told WICU that she had "lost a piece of me that can never be replaced."
"I'm just so hurt my babies are gone," she said. "I love them dearly. I just hurt inside knowing that my kids were fighting and hurting in that fire. Every minute, I feel the same pain."
The fire, reported about 1:15 a.m. Sunday, was funneling out of every first-floor window when firefighters arrived, Erie Chief Fire Inspector John Widomski said the blaze appeared to have started in the first-floor living room.
The department's two fire inspectors and three Erie police detectives trained in fire investigations are working to determine the cause.
Valerie Lockett-Slupski, standing across the street from the fire-damaged house, said that she was the grandmother of four of the children — two boys and two girls — and that they were staying at the home because their parents were working overnight.
