Flames Trap, Kill 2 Young Brothers in Tractor Trailer

Two Lake View Terrace brothers, 4 and 7, were trapped by flames and burned to death Thursday in a tractor-trailer truck where they had been playing with matches, Los Angeles firefighters reported.

Neighbors said they had been trying for months to get the truck trailer and two others removed from a grassy field because they were a fire hazard and a potential danger to children.

“We kept hearing, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, the trailers will be moved tomorrow,’ ” said Evelyn Farrington, whose son reported the blaze just before 10 a.m. “Well, we heard one too many tomorrows for those two little boys.”

The victims were identified as 7-year-old Justin Lindsey Brown and his brother, Daniel Shane Anderson, 4. The boys lived with their mother, Brenda Anderson, about eight houses from the cul-de-sac near the Foothill Freeway. The trailers are on a vacant lot at the end of the 10500 block of Woldrich Street, at the side of a steep freeway embankment.

Authorities said the boys left their yard while playing Thursday morning and headed down the street to the trailers. A side door to one of the trailers, in which furniture and appliances were stored, was unlocked and the boys used a chair to climb into it.

Neighbors said the boys had been known to play with matches, according to Capt. Don Sawyer of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s arson unit.

“It looks like the kids were in there playing with matches and a fire started,” Sawyer said. “The fire spread rapidly and blocked their only means of getting out. They moved to the back but the rear doors had been welded shut. They were trapped.”

Terry Farrington, 14, was on Woldrich Street when he saw the trailer burning. He knocked on a neighbor’s door and the Fire Department was called. He said he heard no calls for help from the trailer.

Capt. Everett Ford said firefighters found the trailer engulfed in flames when they arrived and extinguished the blaze in about five minutes. While pulling chairs and appliances out of the trailer’s burned-out shell, they found the two bodies.