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