A father who went shopping for Christmas had a tragic return home when he learned that his four children and another young family member perished in a fire at his home last weekend.
The five young people, aged 2 to 13, were left alone at home while the father went shopping Saturday evening in Bullhead City, Arizona, CBS News reported Tuesday.
The children were all together in an upstairs bedroom of the duplex when flames started in the fireplace on the ground floor and spread up the stairs, preventing the children from escaping. , according to police.
Neighbors quickly arrived on the scene to try to save the children. They even allegedly installed an extension ladder in the upstairs bedroom. Men also used garden hoses and broke windows to try to help them.
“We were screaming at the top of our lungs,” a neighbor, Patrick O’Neal, testified to the American media. “We didn’t see anything, we didn’t hear anything. There are a lot of guys here who would have gone into that fire if we had known there were kids.”
Firefighters also arrived on site four minutes after the blaze was reported.
