Two Children Dead In Gary Apartment Fire

CHICAGO (CBS) — Two children were killed Sunday morning, when their apartment in Gary, Indiana, went up in flames.

A third child survived the blaze, after he jumped several stories, and was caught by neighbors.

Gary firefighters responded to a blaze at a four-story apartment building near Lake and Forest around 11:45 a.m.

A boy was trapped in the fourth-floor apartment where the fire started. His only option was to jump out of the window, as neighbors waited below with a blanket to help break his fall.

“We grabbed this cover, and we told him to just jump, and they told him 1, 2, 3, 4, and he jumped,” neighbor Earl Stiff said. “It was like 20 people holding the blanket.”

“It was hard, because we don’t have credentials for this, but we had to do what we had to do,” neighbor Tevin Thompson said.

While that 8-year-old boy was saved, two others inside the apartment died: 2-year-old Kailani Gober and her 5-year-old brother, Kristopher Gober.

It took firefighters about four hours to extinguish the blaze.

It was unclear where the children’s parents were at the time of the fire.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, but fire officials said they are looking into the possibility one of the children might have been cooking when the fire started.

from CBS Chicago https://ift.tt/2G7p1Y3