3 Boys Saved From Flames in Apartment

Two men fought their way through thick smoke to save three terrified boys from a burning apartment in Lancaster on Thursday morning after the boys’ mother went outside and left a candle burning in her bedroom, Los Angeles County Fire Department officials said.

Officials said Wesley White and Chris Willis, neighbors of the family, saved the lives of James, Josiah and Philip Halstead, ages 11, 7, and 6.

$20,000 in Damage

There were no injuries.

The fire caused at least $20,000 damage and was blamed on careless use of the candle, said Fire Department spokesman Don Kanallakan.

Social workers Thursday were questioning the boys’ mother, Donna Halstead, 34, to determine whether to take the boys into protective custody, said Emery Bontrager of the county Department of Children’s Services.

Meanwhile, the boys and a sister were left in the care of a grandmother of Halstead’s boyfriend in Rosamond, Bontrager said.

The fire broke out around midnight in the apartment building in the 45400 block of Cedar Avenue. White, 18, and Willis, 22, who work together at a Lancaster tire shop, ran to the scene fearing for the safety of White’s newborn, who lives with his mother in an apartment next to the Halsteads.

“The whole neighborhood was standing out here, but nobody was doing anything,” Willis said. “We had to go in.”

The two said they made their way through thick smoke to the boys’ bedroom, which was next to the bedroom where the fire had started. “We couldn’t see, but we could hear them crying and screaming,” White said. “They were scared to come out.”

Willis pulled one boy out the front door to safety and White, who said he lost consciousness briefly from the smoke and was startled awake by falling against a hot object, rescued the other two.

Thanks Rescuers

A distraught Halstead thanked the two men in front of her gutted apartment Thursday as a crowd of neighbors and reporters looked on.

Halstead said she had checked on the boys and gone out to ask a neighbor for a cigarette. “I was just gone about three minutes,” she said. “I forgot to blow out the candle.”

Halstead said she used candles for light because her electricity had been turned off for non-payment. She said she had left a candle burning on a trunk near her bed.

Fire Department Battalion Chief Jerry Peskett said investigators were attempting to determine where the fire began, and checking reports that the youngest boy had moved the candle from the trunk to his mother’s bed.

Bontrager said the Department of Children’s Services has had previous contact with the family, but he would not elaborate.