INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A fire swept through a small home in
Indianapolis on Saturday morning, killing a couple and two of their
children and leaving two surviving siblings in "very critical"
condition, a fire official said.
The home is adjacent to a busy
Interstate 70 overpass, and a motorist on that highway reported the fire
about 9:10 a.m., Capt. Rita Reith said. Subsequent 911 calls led crews
to the home’s exact location in an east side neighborhood.
Firefighters
found the parents and their four children — ages 14, 11, 8 and 6 —
unconscious inside the small bungalow-style home and brought them
outside, starting efforts to resuscitate them on the lawn, Reith said.
"They knew they had victims inside the house, but they were not expecting six," she said.
Authorities
said Lionel "Leo" Guerra, 47, and his 33-year-old wife, Brandy Mae
Guerra, were pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Eskenazi
Hospital.
The couple’s 11-year-old son, Esteban Guerra, and
8-year-old daughter, Blanquita Guerra, were pronounced dead at Riley
Hospital for Children, where their two siblings — a 14-year-old girl and
a 6-year-old boy — remained in critical condition late Saturday
afternoon.
"We have two children who are very, very critical condition," Reith said. "It’s been a
horrific morning for us."
Investigators
do not suspect any foul play was involved in the fire, but Reith said
its cause remains under investigation and there’s no sign the home had
working smoke detectors.
Reith said firefighters extinguished the fire in about 10 minutes.
One
of the 911 callers reported that they had heard people yelling inside
the home, which Reith described as about the size of a two-car garage,
but investigators aren’t sure what unfolded inside.
"They were
awake if that’s the case, but they still couldn’t get out. Was the fire
location and where they were located in the house not allowing them to
get out? We don’t know," she said.
The home sits in a lower-income
neighborhood with a mix of small homes built next to an industrial
corridor and a major interstate.
Hours after the fire, the tan
single-story home’s exterior showed few signs of fire damage, aside from
soot blackening some windows. Reith said the interior suffered heavy
fire damage.
The couple was married and the family had lived there for several years, she said.
Indianapolis has had eight fire deaths in 2014, including those killed in Saturday’s fire, she said.
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Associated Press writer Tom LoBianco contributed to this report.
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