A three-year-old girl perished in a house fire yesterday in Malabar but five of her siblings were able to run to safety.
Her eldest sister, Tonya Adeshina, 14, who was left in charge of the children blamed herself for the tragedy.
Adeshina wept bitterly as she recalled hearing her three-year-old sister, Tyran Garcia, scream out her name before perishing in a house fire.
Speaking with the media at her Herman Gerard Avenue home, in Malabar, Adeshina, said she was at home drawing with the toddler while her four other siblings were playing.
Adeshina said she was alerted by her eight-year-old sister who began shouting that the bed was on fire.
“Some of them were outside so I just grab the rest and run outside and then I went back in with a bucket to out the blaze. The fire blow up in my face and it had real smoke so I pass through the back. That’s when I start to hear Tyran screaming out my name, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t go back inside,” the teen wept as she was consoled by her mother, Abigaile Mota.
Mota, a mother of seven, said she spent the weekend in Toco and was on her way home when she found out what had happened.
Mota said she was told that her youngest child was found behind the space saver in the living room.
Fire officials believe the child attempted to hide from the flames and became trapped.
Little Tyran attended Precious Lambs Kindergarten in Maloney.
The family also lost all their belongings in the blaze.
The children’s stepfather Terrance Wilson wept openly as he sat on the culvert adjacent to the burnt rubble that was once his home.
Wilson said the family’s entire possessions had been destroyed when the two-storey apartment caught afire.
“I don’t know why this happened to me. I am not a bad parent, I does work hard to take of my children. I failed that child,” Wilson said, before he was stopped by relatives for blaming himself.
Wilson said he suffered a stroke late last year, but his determination to provide for his children forced him to heal in record time and he went back working in construction to support his family.
It was while at a jobsite in Arouca yesterday that he received the call about the fire.
“I wasn’t there for her, my sole purpose was to care for them but I wasn’t there,” Wilson cried.
According to fire officials the blaze started around 1.30 pm at the upper apartment if the two-storey building.
The cause of the fire was not yet determined as fire officials will return today to complete their investigations.
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