Neighbors Save Three, but Toddler Dies in Fire

Neighbors pried away security bars from a window, rescuing a mother and two of her children from their burning home in Southwest Los Angeles on Tuesday, but the help came too late to save the woman’s 14-month-old son.

After extinguishing the blaze about 9:30 a.m., firefighters found the body of Cleveland Starling on a couch in the living room--10 feet from the front door of the home in the 3700 block of South 3rd Avenue, City Fire Department spokesman Manny Hernandez said.

Donna Starling and her other two sons, Michael, 5 and Daniel, 3, escaped unhurt. No one else was in the home.

The fire apparently started when the two older boys poked straw strands from a broom into the pilot flame of a floor heater in the living room, Hernandez said. The straw caught fire, and cinders dropped to the carpet, causing a fast-moving fire that ignited a chair and quickly engulfed the front portion of the single-story home.

As the flames spread, Donna Starling, 25, who was asleep in a bedroom in the rear of the house, was roused by the two boys, Hernandez said.

“She could hear the baby crying, but flames and smoke blocked off the front of the house so she couldn’t get to the baby,” he said.

Before firefighters arrived, several people in the neighborhood responded to shouts and flames coming from the home, said Edith Hunter, who lives across the street.

Realizing that the family could not escape through the front of the house because of the flames, neighbor Jerome Walker and an unidentified passer-by pried the security bars from a rear window and lifted Starling and the two older boys to safety, Hunter said.

Starling tried several times to re-enter her home while it was still on fire, said Stella Willis, 42, a neighbor who said she helped restrain the distraught mother.

A still-dazed Starling returned to the scene Tuesday night to survey what was left of the water-damaged furniture and clothing--including a pair of tiny tennis shoes--that had been heaped in her front yard. Officials placed the damage estimate at $40,000.

“I was trying to see if I could get inside to see if I could get my baby out,” she said. “I was trying to get back in there.”

Willis added: “I tried to go in because I knew the child was still inside. You know the way smoke is--it stays up high so you can crawl through on your hands and knees. But every time I asked the mother about where the baby was, she said she had been sleeping and she didn’t know.”

Willis said firefighters told her that they found the baby less than 10 feet from the front door.

“I was so close,” she said “So close. Ten feet. I could have crawled right there,” Willis said.

As she sobbed quietly, Willis added that her mother had died in a fire when she was an infant.

Starling’s husband, Michael Gill, 28, who was at his job as a security guard when the fire broke out, said the sofa on which the baby was found was the child’s favorite spot to nestle.

“He likes to climb up there to go to sleep,” Gill said.

Gill said his family would stay with Starling’s mother for the next few days. He said he was unsure if they would be able to move back into the home.

Fire officials said that although the home was not equipped with smoke detectors, the death may not have been avoidable given how quickly the fire spread.

“It is a shame,” said Hunter, the neighbor. “The baby had just started learning to walk.”