Boy Not Competent for Fatal Fire Charges

The Associated Press: Boy Not Competent for Fatal Fire Charges
GREENVILLE, Ohio (AP) — A 10-year-old boy accused of deliberately starting a fire that killed his mother, younger sister and three other children was ruled not competent Tuesday to face juvenile counts of murder and arson.

Judge Michael McClurg dismissed the charges against Timothy Douglas Byers in Darke County Juvenile Court.

Police say the boy admitted setting the Sept. 16 fire in this western Ohio city but did not intend for anyone to die.

However, Byers' attorney, David Rohrer, has said his client denies the charges and was pressured into giving the purported confession.

Two psychologists, one hired by the court and the other by the prosecution, found that Byers did not have the developmental maturity to understand the proceedings or to aid his lawyers in his own defense.

"The evidence clearly shows he doesn't understand," McClurg said.

McClurg ordered the boy to perform 40 hours of community service, return to school and attend a fire safety class. The judge said he would review the case in six months. He declared Byers a ward of the state but left him in temporary custody of a grandmother.

The victims were the boy's mother, Chanan Palmer, 30, and his sister, Kaysha Minnich. Also killed were the children of housemate Christy Winans: Kayla Winans, 6, Je'Shawn Davis, 5, and Jasmine Davis, 3.

Dezirae Jones, an aunt of some of the victims, told the judge that she forgives Byers.

"But there are four children and an adult lady ... I will never be able to see them again," Jones said as tears ran down her face. "I wish we could figure out what happened."

I Hate School.

Little Irish girl calls demolition company requesting them to knock down her school. Apperently, teachers that give homework on Fridays suck. Wonder what she could do w/a lighter?? (Or how she feels about Mondays...and yes that is a Boomtown Rats reference for those of you old enough- or hip enough ;-) to know. Enjoy!)

Children, 4 and 6, left alone rescued from apartment fire

Two children left home alone were rescued from a burning Joliet apartment Wednesday night by a neighbor who kicked in their door, officials said this morning.

A 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl were treated for smoke inhalation in Provena St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet and released, police said.

Twenty five people, including eight children, living on the fourth and fifth floors were displaced by the fire, which started on a bedroom mattress.

But officials this morning could not say how the fire started. The flames were contained within the apartment.

Gee...what do you think caused this fire???

"Supernanny" Kid Sets Fire to Home

"Supernanny" Kid Sets Fire to Home - TMZ.com#continuedcontents#continuedcontents#continuedcontents#continuedcontents#continuedcontents#continuedcontents
News flash! Reality TV shows won't solve every crisis! One family found out the hard way, when their wacky kid set fire to the family home -- after appearing on the TV show "Supernanny." Burn!

The fire appears to have been started by 3-year-old Joel while he was home with mother Susan, and his siblings were in school. Damage to the home was so severe that the family was forced to move into a hotel. Is "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" casting?!

The fire apparently started in the kitchen. As his mother attempted to put the fire out, "the little boy went through the dining room and set fire to the curtains," reports the Daily Mail.

Fire set by grounded boy killed his brother

A 15-year-old boy who killed his little brother by setting fire to the family home as revenge for being grounded, was sentenced to at least ten years imprisonment today.

Matthew Stringer, who was 14 at the time, had been caught stealing thousands of pounds from his older brother and was angry at the punishment dished out by his family who had also confiscated his Xbox computer console.

Stringer poured white spirit in the hall and stairway of his house in Wombwell, near Barnsley, before igniting the fire with a match. Sheffield Crown Court heard that he watched “impassively” as his panicked family tried to escape the house.

His mother, sister, two elder brothers and one of their girlfriends, who was six months pregnant, were forced to jump from upstairs windows to escape the blaze. One of the older brothers broke both his ankles and his badly burned mother spent a number of months in hospital as a result of the fire on November 3 last year.

In the rush to flee the burning building nobody noticed that the youngest brother Adam was still in his room. His body was found by firefighters in his badly charred bed, he died of smoke inhalation while sleeping under the covers still wearing his brand new headphones.

The court heard that Stringer’s behaviour had deteriorated in the months leading up to the fire. In October he told a friend at school that he was planning to burn down his house to kill his mother after she had grounded him.

Since his parents separated in August 2005, Matthew Stringer had lit fires in a skip, a field and a garden shed. He had also used a cigarette lighter to cause burns to his hands.

13-year-old girl charged with murdering relative in arson fire

The 13-year-old step-granddaughter of a Sprenger Avenue man who died in a fire early Friday at his house was charged with deliberately setting the blaze.

The girl, whose name was withheld because of her age, was taken into custody by Buffalo police homicide detectives just after 6:30 p.m. and charged with two counts of seconddegree murder and first-degree arson in the death of Vincent Fairfax, 43.

Firefighters arriving at 125 Sprenger shortly after 4:15 a.m. discovered the two-story home engulfed in flames. Neighbors said four people, including two children, were calling for help from the second-floor porch as flames shot out the windows of the house. They were rescued by firefighters.

Fairfax was pronounced dead at the scene.

“There was a trail of some kind of flammable liquid [the suspect] used on the first floor,” Deputy Fire Commissioner Patrick T. Lewis said.

Lewis said the liquid was apparently poured in the kitchen, outside a bedroom and dining room area. Investigators from the Buffalo Fire Marshal’s office and Buffalo Police Homicide Unit questioned children and other members of the family.

Sources close to the investigation said the suspect also doused an 11- year-old boy asleep in the house with the liquid, waking him up. She told him he’d better get out or he’d “burn with the rest of them,” said the source, who added that the suspect also led a girl with cerebral palsy out of the house before setting it on fire.

Investigators said the girl admitted to setting the fire. However, they refused to release any details about the girl’s motive.

Click the link above to read the rest of the story!

11 Year Old Girl saves family from fire that she played a part in causing

WAVY TV 10 - News, Weather, Traffic, Sports for Hampton Roads, Virginia - North Eastern North Carolina - 11 Year Old Girl saves family from fire that she played a part in causing

11-year-old KeKe Wilson says this to other kids,""Don't, don't mess with fire ever again."
Wilson speaks the truth even when it has cost her so much. Her Suffolk home on Lake Kennedy Drive went up in flames about 4:30 this morning. And the girl admits her actions ignited this accidental fire. Wilson says, "I was like had matches and I had lit the candles. I had two candles. I had lit 'em and that's, that's the cause of the fire."

But her mistake is the kind any grownup could have made and what she did after has more than made up for her slipup. Suffolk firefighters say Wilson told them she did light the candle hanging on a wall that was the source of the flames. Hours later in the motel where she and her grandmother are now living, Wilson further explains she thought she had extinguished the candle flame,"I thought I had blew the candle out I thought I had blewn the candle it, it wasn't, it wasn't out so."

Wilson says she fell asleep and then woke up to a fire burning her bed by her feet, "I just ran, I ran to my grandma's room and I said, I said to my grandmom, I said mom there's a fire, there's a fire, there's a fire in my bed."

Wilson's 60 year old grandmother, Dorothy Mae Cross, says, "So I jumped up ran and looked into her room and saw the fire at the foot of the bed started hollering calling my brother telling him the house is on fire and get up, get up, got to get up and get out."

Now Suffolk firefighters credit the girl for saving herself, her grandmother, and her 30 year old grand-uncle Tyrone Ralph-- who jumped out a window to escape after hearing Wilson's grandmother's warnings.

Suffolk Fire Captain Jim Judkins points out, "This could have been a very tragic story here today."

Cross adds, "I'm very proud of her cause my baby could have been gone. She could have got burned up... I thank God we're here, God woke her up to wake us up."

Police: Children Who Died in Pittsburgh House Fire Left Home Alone, Playing With Matches Started Blaze

FOXNews.com - Police: Children Who Died in Pittsburgh House Fire Left Home Alone, Playing With Matches Started Blaze - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

The outcome of this story is tragic...yet much more expected then the first story (about a babysitter that fled the scene). Children (under the age of 5) that die in fires, often die in fires set by other children...and the leading factor in child fire play...is children that are left unattended (not monitored...)Unfortunently this story illustrates all too clearly the statistics that make up our nations fire problem.

PITTSBURGH — Police investigating a row house fire that killed five small children earlier this week have determined that the youngsters had been left home alone and started the blaze when they were playing with matches.

There was no 17-year-old baby sitter looking after them, as authorities had originally been told.

Seven children ages 3 to 8 were left home by themselves, according to authorities. Five died and two 8-year-old boys escaped uninjured.

The fire, first reported at about 1:20 a.m. Tuesday, began when children playing with matches ignited furnishings in the living room on the second floor, officials said. The five children, who were found in an adjoining bedroom, died from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Click the link above for the rest of the story.
For more info on Children and Fire, check out these links:
Child Fire Casualties
Children and Fire (Firesetting information)
Fire Risk and Children
Investigating City Characteristics and Residential Fire Rates
Children and Fire in the US 1994-1997
Socioeconomic Factors and the Incidence of Fire
Fire in the United States
Resources for Parents and Teachers
More Resources from www.usfa.dhs.gov

FDNY probes 2nd fire in 2 days set by children

FDNY probes 2nd fire in 2 days set by children - Newsday.com

NEW YORK -- Investigators are probing the second tragic blaze in two days that appears to have been set by children playing with fire.

One of the Brooklyn blazes was started by children playing with matches. Another appeared to have been sparked by a child with a cigarette lighter. The result, in both cases, was horror.

The first fire, on Thursday, killed 10-month-old Melanie Webb as she lay in her stroller in the borough's Brownsville section.
The second, on Friday in Bedford-Stuyvesant, injured eight people, including 2-year-old Tavonne Green.

"They say Tavonne is burned from head to toe," a relative, Joseph Story, told the New York Post. The boy's mother, India Green, was also badly burned in the fire. His 7-year-old brother and 8-year-old sister suffered less severe injuries, but were also hospitalized.

Firefighters said the children appeared to have been playing with matches when the fire broke out shortly before 6 a.m.

India Green and a 14-year-old neighbor rushed into the burning brownstone after hearing the children's cries. The teen was beaten back by smoke. Green kept trying, even after the flames set fire to her clothing.

Firefighters pulled the entire family to safety.

That blaze had a happier ending than the fire a day before that killed Melanie Webb.

Relatives said investigators believe the infant's stroller was accidentally ignited by a sibling playing with a cigarette lighter. Two other children in the home suffered smoke inhalation.

Police on Saturday said they had charged the baby's mother, Althea Stuger-Webb, 24, with endangering the welfare of a child. Investigators said she was running an errand when the fire broke out. The children were home alone.

When kids play with fire, firefighters worry

Cabinet.com | The CABINET PRESS INC | Covering Milford, Wilton, Amherst, Lyndeborough, Greenville, Mont Vernon, Jaffrey, Mason, Hollis, Brookline, Merrimack and Bedford, NH.

MILFORD —A toddler played with matches and set a mattress on fire last year. Teens played with fireworks and nearly injured four firefighters in Milford last year.

Milford’s fire prevention officer says these are two examples of a huge problem across the nation: kids setting fires.

In Milford in 2006, there were nine such instances and seven of them were intentional. The nine instances involved 15 kids.

“We’ve had children as young as two who have set fires,” said Capt. Jason Smedick, the town’s Fire Prevention Officer.

The toddler was copycatting a grandparent who lit a candle with a match. But the toddler didn’t light a candle; the child set a mattress on fire. Smedick hopes to remind parents that children are watchful and prone to emulate what they see.

The article goes on to discuss the Juvenile Firesetting Program offered by the Milford Fire Department.

Baby Girl Killed In West Philadelphia Fire

kyw.com - Baby Girl Killed In West Philadelphia Fire
This fire was started by two children, 3 & 5 yrs old, playing with matches on their bed. Neither of the two smoke detectors in the home worked...one was missing a battery, the other had a battery but it was dead.
The family didn't have an emergency escape plan...and although the two adults and the two children made it out...no one remembered the 14 month old baby-- who ulitmately died in the fire.

Child-Play Sparked Fire that Killed Bronx Grandmother

1010 WINS - On-Air, Online, On Demand - Child-Play Sparked Fire that Killed Bronx Grandmother

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Authorities say a 7-year old boy playing with a lighter caused a house fire that killed a grandmother in the Soundview section of the Bronx.

Relatives say 87-year-old Carmen Davila, who lived in a basement apartment, was preparing for her daughter’s surprise birthday party when the flames erupted.

Officials say a man and a 17-year old girl jumped from a third-story window to escape the fire. Their fall was broken by an aluminum awning on the first floor, and they walked away uninjured.

Davila was rushed to Jacobi Hospital where she was pronounced dead at 4:03 pm.

Family members said she had 20 grandchildren.

4-year-old starts duplex fire that injures his mother

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Metro -- 4-year-old starts duplex fire that injures his mother
A simple case of "monkey see- monkey do"

The boy accidentally started the fire which spread to a mattress in a back bedroom of the duplex on Clay Avenue at South 29th Street about 7:20 p.m., said San Diego fire spokesman Maurice Luque. It was knocked down in about 10 minutes.

The boy's mother was burned and the fire spread when she tried to drag the mattress outside the home, Luque said. Two of her sons, ages 7 and 15, as well as her 12-year-old nephew, were home at the time and were able to escape without injury.
Luque said that the young boy was apparently watching his cousin starting toys on fire in the yard the day before and was trying to copy him, Luque said.

Damage was estimated at $200,000 to the building and $50,000 to its contents.

The 4-year-old and the 12-year-old will have to attend a mandatory junior fire-setting program, Luque said.