Image
A news conference was held Wednesday morning on details of the fire
Four children, ranging in age from eight months to nine years old, were killed in a house fire in Conyers late Tuesday night.

The oldest victim was 9-year-old Adaria.

Their mother Reba Glass was severely burned as she tried to save her children, according to Maj. Mike Waters of the Conyers Police Department.

"She was able to save one of the children," Waters said. "Witnesses advised that she actually threw that child from a second-story window."

Glass then jumped to safety. Paramedics rushed her to Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital with severe burns. Her surviving child was hospitalized with a shoulder injury, Waters said.

The surviving child turned 6 on Wednesday.

The initial call to 911 came at 11:05 p.m., Waters said. Four officers from a nearby police precinct were on the scene within 30 seconds.

"They found that the home was fully involved upstairs, and they could hear noises coming from up there," Waters said. "They tried to use a fire extinguisher, and it didn't phase the fire at all."

The flames were too intense, as well, for the first-responding firefighters. After knocking down the flames from the outside, firefighters finally were able to enter the duplex. They found three boys and a girl deceased, ages 8 months, three, five and seven.

The children's grandmother Rosetta Mitchell was in the home at the time of the fire. She was not hurt.

"I'm devastated," said neighbor Leslie Slater. "They're like my children. They come to my house every day all day. They're my daughter's best friend."

"You know, you go through a shock, and it really hasn't worn off," said neighbor Jan Dennis. "When you think about losing children, that's really bad."

"It just makes my heart drop," said neighbor Tiffany Tillmon, who said she was at the side of the surviving 6-year-old boy as paramedics tended to his injury. "When he left on the stretcher going out, he was saying bye to everybody. He was like, 'I'll see y'all later.' He wasn't crying, but he doesn't know yet what happened."

Tillmon said the boy gave police a theory about how the fire might have started. He blamed the father of one of his younger brothers.

"He was just telling them that he was knocking on his door that night and his mom wouldn't come outside," Tillmon said. "So his dad got mad and went around the back and threw something through the back window. That's what he thinks caused the fire."

As soon as daylight came, local and state investigators began looking into the boy's theory. As of mid-morning Thursday, they had not found any evidence that the fire was intentionally set.