A father who had gone Christmas shopping had tragically returned home when he learned that his four children and another young family member had died in a fire at his home last weekend.
The five children, ages 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 the fire caught fire in the ground floor fireplace and spread down the stairs, preventing the children from escaping, according to police.
Neighbors quickly arrived at the scene to try to rescue the children. They allegedly installed an additional staircase in the upstairs bedroom. The men also used garden hoses and smashed windows in an attempt to help them.
One of the neighbors, Patrick O’Neill, testified to the American media, saying: “We were screaming at the top of our lungs.” “We didn’t see anything, we didn’t hear anything. There’s a lot of guys out here who would have gotten into this fire if we’d known there were kids.”
Firefighters also arrived at the site four minutes after the fire was reported.
