Boy, 9, Perishes in Fire Just Two Feet From Safety

A 9-year-old boy was found dead inside the smoldering remains of his family’s Stanton home Thursday morning, just two feet from a doorway that could have led him to safety. He apparently was the victim of smoke inhalation.

Investigators said the rest of the family escaped the fire that destroyed the home, not realizing that Anh Viet Nguyen was still trapped inside. Intense heat and smoke forced the child’s grandfather and other relatives to abandon their efforts to re-enter the home, firefighters and other authorities said.

Relatives had last seen the boy watching television in the family room at the back of the house Thursday morning. A paramedic who entered the burning home found the body, with only his clothes and hair scorched, two feet from the kitchen door.

‘Somehow He Got Missed’

“He was overcome by the smoke,” said Bernie Mazuca, a senior deputy coroner investigator. “It was really so sad to be two feet away. They thought he was ushered out with the rest but somehow he got missed.”

Fire investigators, aided by a Vietnamese interpreter from the Garden Grove Police Department, were trying to determine what caused the fire, which spread so rapidly that firefighters en route to the home could see it two miles away. The one-story, four-bedroom house on Georgian Street was completely engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived, witnesses said.

Stanton Fire Chief Gerald Hunter estimated damage at $100,000.

The nine surviving family members, including three children, were housed Thursday night at a local hotel by the Red Cross.

Though Anh Viet Nguyen spoke what one neighbor called “beautiful English,” his parents are not fluent in the language, and their hysteria made efforts to gather information about the fire futile, investigators said, adding that they will wait until at least today to try to interview the boy’s mother, Lieu Nguyen, 30, and father, Lac Nguyen, 32.

Cause of Fire Baffling

Mazuca said the cause of the fire had investigators baffled. Neither the home’s gas heating system nor the oven was operating, and the fireplace wasn’t in use. It appeared, she said, that the “highest concentration” of the fire was in the attached room addition that the Nguyens used as a family room, where the boy was last seen.

Investigators said he apparently had gone to the kitchen in his stocking feet in an attempt to escape.

“It looked like he was on his way out and just passed out right where he was,” Hunter said. “He was dressed like the little guy was all ready to go to school, except he didn’t have his shoes on.”

The boy’s father left for work at 6:30 a.m. and noticed no signs of trouble, Mazuca said. She said the child’s uncle, Hung Nguyen, 17, got up for work about 7 a.m. and noticed smoke coming from forced-air heating vents.

“He opened the door to his room and (found that) the residence was filled with smoke,” Mazuca said. “He started yelling and screaming,” and the family fled.

Once outside, they realized the boy was still in the house. “The uncle tried to go back in but there was too much smoke,” Mazuca added.

Red Cross officials said that the boy’s grandfather, Chu Nguyen, 61, was treated for smoke inhalation at a nearby hospital and released.

Neighbors on the cul-de-sac said that the family moved into the home sometime before Christmas. They said they knew little about the individual relatives because they always seemed to be working. One resident recalled Lac Nguyen telling him last week that he’d been “run out of Vietnam 12 years ago because they weren’t Communist,” and that he would love to return to his homeland “but they’d shoot me.”

Anh Viet Nguyen was especially friendly, said one neighbor, who was especially fond of the child he nicknamed “Tagger.”

“Course, he’d ride his bike out here in front of my yard and he’d stop and talk to me,” said Robert O. Martin, 61. He was among several neighbors visibly shaken by the tragedy.

“He was a smart little kid, he was. A real nice little kid,” Martin said. “He’d come by sometimes on his way home from school. He’d say his name was Anh, like on the table . . . .”