3 Children Trapped by Bars Die in Fire

There were nice, new things in the Baylisses’ remodeled house at the edge of Watts, things Clara Bayliss had been waiting 16 years to have--a brand new stove in the kitchen, the beautiful new china cabinets in the front room.

And when Clara and her husband, the Rev. Tommy Bayliss, put up bars on all the windows, even on the front door, they did it to protect the nice things she had waited so long to own.

But early Friday morning, the bars that kept the thieves out instead trapped three of her young grandchildren inside, killing them when fire billowed through the children’s bedroom. The three--brother, baby sister, cousin--died even as neighbors with crowbars tried to pry the strong bars off the bedroom window.

Coroner’s autopsies were still pending on 3-year-old Deondre Wilson, 2-year-old Mark Gillespie and Mark’s year-old sister, Dominique. Mark and Dominque’s mother was in a hospital and had left them with their grandparents. Deondre’s mother, who usually shared that bedroom with the boy, was away visiting, the family said.

Grandparents and children were asleep by 10:30 p.m., said Clara Bayliss’ sister, Willette Versher. More than three hours later, “The neighbors heard him (Bayliss) scream and saw the flames--they pulled the bars off the window and pulled them out. He said, ‘Help the kids, help the kids!’ ”

Bayliss had awakened to Deondre’s “screaming and screaming” in the adjacent bedroom. But “by the time he jumped up and opened his door, the flames met him,” Versher said. “All he could do was stand there and scream, ‘Help, help!’ ”

Window bars in two of the three bedrooms, including the Baylisses’, were equipped with quick-release latches for such an emergency, but the Baylisses evidently did not use theirs in the confusion. City fire officials said the children’s bedroom did not have such a latch. Quick-release levers are required under a retroactive city ordinance, Fire Department spokesman Jim Wells said.

The family had just bought a smoke detector but had not yet installed it.

Firefighters extinguished the blaze in 17 minutes, and the children were pronounced dead at the scene shortly after 2 a.m. Clara Bayliss suffered minor smoke inhalation, her sister said.

Late Friday, the shaken grandparents sat in Versher’s home, upset anew that fire officials were saying that at least one of the children had been playing with matches and that started the fire.

“For them to say the kids were playing with matches--I’ve heard it twice on TV--how can you make such a statement?” Versher demanded. “Nobody in the house smoked cigarettes.”

They are Mississippi Baptists, and “there are certain things these kids just do not do,” Versher said. They are “paranoid about keeping even disinfectants away from those kids.”

“I don’t know what happened; no one knows what happened,” she said, “except the kids, and they’re dead.”