Young Brothers Killed in Blaze in Truck Trailer

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

Neighbors said they had been trying for months to get the truck trailer and two others removed from a grassy field at the end of the 10500 block of Woldrich Street because the vehicles were a fire hazard and an attractive danger to children.

“We kept hearing, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, the trailers will be moved tomorrow,’ ” said Evelyn Farrington, a Woldrich Street resident whose son reported the 9:52 a.m. blaze. “Well, we heard one too many tomorrows for those two little boys.”

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

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

‘Played With Matches Before’

Capt. Don Sawyer of the Fire Department arson unit said neighbors reported the boys had been known to play with matches.

“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 and extinguished the blaze in about five minutes. While pulling chairs and appliances out of the trailer’s burnt-out shell, they found the two small bodies.

“It looks like they had been trying to get away from the fire,” Ford said.

The boys’ mother stood crying before her home Thursday as firefighters, investigators and reporters clogged the street. Other residents, saddened but angry, said the fatal fire was exactly what they feared.

“Everybody thought it was a fire hazard,” said Joan Edwards, who lives next door to the lot where the trailers are located. “The neighborhood kids were always going over there and we were afraid of a fire. We thought it would get down into the brush and spread to our houses. We never thought it would end up like this.”

Edwards said the empty lot is used as a shortcut by children from a nearby school and recreation center, and by horse riders. There are stables nearby and horses in the yards of some homes on the quiet street. Edwards said when the trailers were placed on the lot in July, 1987, several residents asked the landowner to remove them.

“We were told they would be moved, but they never were,” she said.

Authorities said the lot is owned by William Gohl, who lives nearby, and the trailers are owned by Kenneth Young of Ontario. Young could not be reached for comment but Gohl said he is in the process of selling the land and the trailers were to be removed in less than two weeks. He said he allowed Young to store the trailers on the land but had been attempting to get them removed since the neighbors asked him to.

“It just takes time to find a place for trailers like that,” Gohl said.

Gohl said the side door the two boys had climbed through Thursday was supposed to be locked but the lock had been broken.

“The neighborhood kids broke it off,” he said. “They know they aren’t supposed to go back there, but they do. We kept running kids away. What a tragedy. It breaks my heart.”

Authorities said it did not appear that any fire or health codes had been broken by placing trailers on the lot. They said it was unclear whether it was a zoning violation.

Phyllis Dirks stood in her yard and watched and cried as authorities removed the bodies of the two boys Thursday. A bike belonging to one of the victims and the chair they used to climb into the trailer stood next to it.

“Just think of what happened to those two little kids,” she said. “I think it could have been prevented.”