Man Dies, 4 Hurt in Fire at Apparent Board-and-Care Home

A 67-year-old man was killed Thursday and four other people “who looked to be in their 70s or 80s” were hospitalized after fire swept through what neighbors said was a home where elderly people were cared for in South-Central Los Angeles, authorities said.

Neighbors said they had not seen anyone come or go “in years” from the ramshackle house in the 9600 block of Laurel Avenue in an unincorporated area near Watts.

“It was very pitiful,” said Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Samuel Hernandez. The dead man, he said, had been in a wheelchair and had fallen out trying to escape the fire. Authorities identified the victim as Charles Smith.

“He was right by the door,” the captain said.

The 5:21 p.m. blaze had totally engulfed the house in flames and filled it with smoke when firefighters arrived, Hernandez said.

Neighbors from the nearby Jordan Downs Housing Project said they thought the home was “some kind of board-and-care facility.”

Louise Petty, 30, said she has lived in Jordan Downs all her life, and she saw two women she remembered from her childhood being rescued from the house. She said she thought the two had been dead for years.

Gregory Brown, 31, said he and a friend Leo Shorty, 46, were sitting on his porch in Jordan Downs, about a block away, when they saw smoke. They picked their way through a yard choked with debris to go to the side of the house where they saw flames shooting from windows.

“We could hear a woman’s voice in the back yard saying, ‘Help,’ ” Brown said. “She looked to be in her 80s and was wearing only a blouse. She was naked from the waist down. Another old lady was standing next to a chair.”

Brown said both women appeared “frightened and disoriented.”

He and Shorty then saw an elderly man on the back porch and did not realize he was blind, until he started walking back to the house after they had led him away, he said.

“They were skin and bones,” he said of the elderly people. “They could hardly walk.”

Another neighbor, Bertha McCord said the people rescued Thursday “look like they haven’t eaten in years.”

The yard of the one-story house in a residential-industrial area was filled with abandoned cars, a house trailer and stacks of wood. The fence appeared to be made of whatever material was at hand--doors, slats of wood, a ladder.

Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Bob Olmstead said the blaze originated about 90 minutes before the fatal fire when someone left a lit cigarette on a mattress, “and it flared up. The fire was doused with water, and it was thought that the flames were out.”

Names of the injured were not released. Hernandez said the house was a total loss, and estimated damage at $100,000.

Authorities said they were attempting to determine whether the home was a licensed facility, and to identify and locate its owner.