Third Victim Dies a Day After Fire

Anthony Olivas Sr., who fought valiantly but futilely to rescue his wife and disabled preteen son in an intentionally set house fire Monday, died Tuesday as a result of burns he suffered in the blaze.

Olivas, 37, had managed to get his mother-in-law and father-in-law out of the burning home. He was, relatives noted sadly, a veteran of the Army National Guard fatally injured on Veterans Day.

He died at Torrance Memorial Hospital’s burn center Tuesday morning, a little more than 24 hours after his wife, Diana, 37, and their son, Anthony Jr., 12, had died on the stairway of their two-story home.

His death elevated the criminal probe of the fire to a triple homicide. Arson investigators found a yet-unanalyzed substance in the home that they believe caused the fire that trapped Diana Olivas as she attempted to aid a son who could not walk unassisted.

Diana Olivas’ parents, Lenore and Alfred Savedras, both in their 60s, were released Tuesday from a hospital where they had been treated for smoke inhalation. Alfred Savedras, a stroke victim, is also disabled.

As investigators chased down reports suggesting that someone may have thrown something into the house before it burst into flames, stunned family members--including the Olivas’ only other child, Diana Chacon, 16--sifted through the gutted structure on Belcher Street and asked why.

“They didn’t deserve this. Why did someone do this?” asked Anthony Olivas Sr.’s sister, Alice, as she fingered charred pictures of the victims and the few other items that could be salvaged.

Inside the house, every room was burned and some parts of the floor were missing. The badly burned staircase leading to the second floor gave mute testimony to why Anthony Olivas Sr. could not reach his wife and son.

Outside sat the charred remnants of the Olivas’ lives: a half-burned family Bible, boxes filled with sooty toys, a bare rattan bookshelf and a plastic trash can filled with blackened shoes.

Atop the shoes were the partially charred and melted plastic braces that Anthony Jr., a spina bifida victim who was known in his family as Chacho, used to get about for short distances.

“I hope who did it can see this,” Patricia Viera, who is married to a cousin of the Olivas family, said as she pointed to the braces and then to 16-year-old Diana who is married with a 1-year-old daughter and lives nearby. “She has nothing left. No mother. No father. No brother.”

Diana choking back tears, could say little more than: “There’s no reason why. This shouldn’t have happened.”

Sgt. Stuart Reed, a sheriff’s homicide detective, said he and his partner were chasing leads suggesting that the Olivas may have been caught up somehow in a neighborhood feud, perhaps a gang-related one.

Family members discounted that notion, saying the couple was neither lawbreaking nor troublemaking.

Both of the dead parents spent much of their time on outings with their son, family members said. Only last Saturday, they said, the couple accompanied him on a trip to Sea World in San Diego organized by the 12-year-old’s class at Hutchinson Middle School in La Mirada.

Diana Olivas indulged her son’s passions for popular toys and professional wrestling, her family said.

Patricia Viera said the mother had recently gotten a job as a clerk at a Pic N Save after Anthony Jr. said he wanted a computer for Christmas.

The boy’s father also recently had gotten a job as a laborer for a produce company after a long period of unemployment because of a back injury, Viera said.

Anthony Sr. “was a family man,” said Patricia Viera’s husband, Cruz, who said he joined the Army National Guard with the father on the buddy system. Olivas remained in the service for a decade, Viera said.

A neighbor who was at the scene of the fire said Anthony Olivas Sr. had himself given the best account of what happened during the fire as he lay in an ambulance awaiting medical attention.

The neighbor said Olivas had heard glass breaking and the sound of something falling into the house before he ran downstairs and found the living room in flames.

He first helped his in-laws escape through a back window before going back into the house for what would be his fatal attempt to rescue his wife and son.

As Anthony Sr.’s male relatives hauled items out of the house Tuesday and boarded up broken windows, they occasionally stopped and broke into tears.

“This hurts,” said one brother-in-law, Rudy Montoya. “There’s so much pain.”