Twins' terror
Published:Tuesday | March 22, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Two-year-old sisters perish in Vineyard Town blaze
Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter
Blame was everywhere. So, too, were anger and grief as residents of Langston Terrace and the neighbouring McGregor Gully in Vineyard Town, St Andrew, processed news about the tragic deaths of two-year-old twin sisters in a fire in the community.
The twins, Shanoy and Latoya, had been left by their mother, 21-year-old Kerry-Ann Watson, in a cramped five feet by five feet room, which they called home, in a tenement yard on Langston Terrace.
Watson was immediately taken into police custody after she returned home, despite pleas to see the bodies of her children.
Sometime after 10 a.m. yesterday, residents heard an explosion and saw smoke coming from the rear of the premises.
"Before the fire start me see the padlock over the door and me never know say the twins them in there because me did hear she tell her babyfather say she a carry them come a downtown come check him," said Renée White, a cousin of the twins.
"When me smell the smoke and my uncle come out and pull off the door, me start throw dirt and water inna the house and the fire still a blaze up," added White.
She said she was shocked to find out that the two little girls were trapped inside the burning building.
"By the time my uncle open the door, a pure fire, and somebody say the baby them no in deh because she gone a town with them, but when the fire die down we see two skulls, and a that time we realise say the baby dem did in there," White told The Gleaner.
Fire unit response
She said residents called the fire service and one unit responded and put out the blaze.
That was when the residents beheld the sight, which left some vomiting and others in tears.
"You could see one of the baby near the door with her hand up like she was trying to open it, while the other one was under the bed like she was hiding from the flames," one man said lamenting how terrified they must have been.
"A just last week a woman come yah so come warn 'bout judgement, Selassie God know," the obviously distraught young man added.
He said he was one of the first persons to rush to the scene in an attempt to put out the blaze, but he, too, was not aware that the toddlers were inside the room.
"When me go over there me would a chuck into the room and take them out, but when me reach, the two children them burn up already," he said, close to tears.
The angry residents pointed the blame everywhere as they tried to determine how this tragedy could have been avoided.
The mother of the two girls came in for most of the blame.
But the neighbours and family members who lived in the yard were not spared as residents questioned if they had done everything possible to save the children.
The father of the children, who most people seem not to know, and the Government were also blamed for the poverty which forced the woman and her children to live in the dark, windowless cubby hole, which did not appear as if it could have been approved by the veterinary service to house pigs.
Even the firefighters were not spared as the residents blamed them for their tardiness, even though most admitted that the children were dead long before they were called in.