Apartment Fire Kills Mother and 3 Children

When Helena Tanner ran outside her Willowbrook-area apartment early Friday, having been awakened by the stench of heavy smoke, she heard the frantic cries of three children trapped behind locked doors and windows in the next apartment.

“It was so dark. The street lights were out and smoke was so heavy and I started screaming to the darlings to come to the window upstairs so they could get out. And I called to their momma, but they just kept crying. And then after a while, I didn’t hear anything. Not anything,” said Tanner, a shudder racking her body as she recalled the nightmare fire that took the lives of her neighbor, Roslyn Jones, 32, and three children aged 3 to 12.

Children at Window

Another resident, Xavier Nolan, 26, who rushed to the back of the two-story stucco building at 12417 S. Clovis Ave. after hearing a commotion, recalled with horror seeing two children looking desperately out an upstairs window.

“They were moving their hands all over on the windows and hollering, and then suddenly they disappeared and all I could see was smoke.”

County firefighters, who arrived at 2:26 a.m., said they had to saw through the dead bolts on the wrought-iron security door, and they were also hampered by the heavy smoke. Just inside the front door, they found the body of one child, who had succumbed to smoke inhalation. A Fire Department spokesman said he did not know where the other victims were found.

The first-story windows were covered by burglar bars, but those on the upper story were not. The upstairs windows in the front of the house were broken out, but neighbors weren’t sure if they had been knocked out by the heat or by several men who tried unsuccessfully to climb into the smoke-filled apartment.

Neighbors also said there were no smoke alarms in the apartment. All the victims were pronounced dead at the scene. Officials would not identify them, but Mae Dyer of Las Vegas said it was Jones, her niece, who died in the fire, along with Antonio Jones, 12, Demetri Jones, 8, and Ryan Craft, 3.

Kitchen Fire Suspected

Firefighters are investigating the cause of the blaze and have called in county sheriff’s homicide detectives, as they routinely do when there are fatalities. Officials for both agencies said they did not know how or where the fire started. Neighbors indicted that it looked like the flames began in the downstairs kitchen.

It took the 25 firefighters about half an hour to extinguish the fire, which caused an estimated $90,000 in damage to the complex. About 50 people were evacuated from the building. Many of the units were enveloped in smoke because they share a common attic, officials noted, but no other injuries were reported. An emergency shelter was set up at a nearby high school.

Dyer, who arrived at the scene at mid-morning, sobbed when she saw her niece’s charred apartment and the wet, burned blankets and personal effects scattered on the roof and grass. “I talked to her yesterday to wish her a happy birthday. Today was her birthday and her child’s too. Oh mercy. . . .”

Worked for Police

Jones moved to Los Angeles seven years ago from Louisiana after separating from her husband, Dyer said. She said Jones worked as a clerk for the Los Angeles Police Department.

“She was always a hard-working girl. She worked in a bank all through high school, and now she was working so hard to give the children a good home,” Dyer said.