-- TORONTO -- While police wouldn't confirm the victims' identities pending autopsies on Monday, reports say Diane Simpson, 35, her eight-year-old daughter and four-year-old son died early Saturday in the three-alarm blaze in a townhouse in the northwest part of the city.This is a very unlucky place.
This was not the first tragic incident for the family. The father of the four-year-old boy who died, Leroy Whittaker, 46, was shot in the head and killed by a bullet that flew through his apartment door in a gang-style murder in July 2005. No arrests were ever made in his slaying.
But don't take my word for it.
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UPDATE: Looking like self-inflicted injury
Who hasn't pulled the batteries out of a smoke detector after burning something in the oven? The difference here... apparently... is that this alarm was never hooked back up.
Mr. Fisher says the mounting bracket and the wiring for the smoke detector on the main floor were there but the unit itself had been removed.Well... it's really not that much of a reach... but I guess nobody wants to speak ill of the dead.
He says the Toronto Housing Authority had inspected that townhouse in February 2006 and there was a working smoke alarm then.
It's not known who removed it.
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LAST WORD: Let's play Grandravine Roulette
Lotta MSM argle-bargle about proposed mandatory installation of sprinkler systems in people's homes... but very little talk about the fact that the hardwired detector on the main floor (which would have tripped the other units in the house)... had been removed.
And not just in this one unit.
Since the three-alarm blaze, fire crews checked other units in the townhouse complex to ensure their alarms were working. They found about eight units also had their alarms deactivated.