Space Heater Started Blaze That Killed 3-Year-Old : Tragedy: The dead boy’s mother said she may have knocked the unit against a mattress, which then caught fire.

A woman who suffered third-degree burns in a fire that killed one of her sons said Sunday that the blaze started when she placed a mattress to be used by the children of a homeless friend too close to a space heater.

“I was getting the girls ready for bed and was going to make up the mattress in the living room,” said Toni Jones, 36, describing the events in the moments before the Friday night incident. “But I had the space heater on and it was too close to the mattress and it caught fire.”

Jones said she tried to pull the mattress outside and put out the fire with her hands. But when she realized she couldn’t do it, Jones said, she tried to free the five children--her three sons and the two visiting girls--in the apartment as neighbors tried frantically to help from outside.

One of Jones’ sons, 3-year-old Aaron, was killed in the blaze. Her other two sons, 9-month-old Isaiah and 4-year-old Carlos, remained hospitalized in critical condition Sunday at UCI Medical Center in Orange with smoke inhalation. Jones and the two girls she was baby-sitting were all released from the burn unit there with various injuries.

“This was all just such a disaster, it was terrible,” she said after her release from the hospital Sunday.

Jones, who said she is receiving welfare while she looks for a job as a chiropractor’s assistant, said she must now cope with the financial burdens of finding a new apartment for her family and burying her son.

A spokeswoman for the Garden Grove Police Department said a report would be released today detailing the cause of Friday’s 11 p.m. blaze.

Jones angrily denied an earlier published report that said the children were playing with matches by the portable heater. She said all five of the children were in one of her two bedrooms when the fire was ignited in the living room.

Jones said that while bringing linen into the living room to prepare the bed, she may have knocked the space heater against the mattress that she had brought into the room for her friend’s two girls, ages 5 and 8.

The friend, Leslie Taverna, once resided in the apartment complex but was forced out onto the streets because of money problems and had been staying with Jones for the last few days, Jones said. Taverna went to the hospital Saturday because of vomiting and left her two daughters at the apartment, Jones said.

“I liked (the Taverna family) real well--they’re good people,” Jones said. “I was doing a good deed.”

Jones recalled the panic as she tried to break a window and free the five children trapped in the bedroom. Neighbors, hearing her screams, tried to break down the front door and succeeded in smashing a window as Jones climbed out and dropped her 9-month-old infant outside.

Jones thanked the neighbors who went into the burning apartment to rescue three of the other children left inside. She said she was unsure why her 3-year-old, Aaron, could not be rescued from the room.

“I still don’t understand why he couldn’t be saved and the other ones were,” she said.

As for her two sons still hospitalized from the fire, Jones said: “They’re still hooked up with tubes and things, but they’ll be fine--they’re pulling through.”

Jones said she has burns on much of her arms and hands and will have to return to UCI Medical Center’s burn unit today for continued treatment. “I’m OK, just trying to build myself up,” she said. “I’ll survive. I’m pretty strong and I pray about it, but I’m going to need some help.”

Times staff writer Lily Eng contributed to this report.