House fire near Grand Lake claims 3-year-old boy
BY SHEILA STOGSDILL World Correspondent
Thursday, September 27, 2012
EUCHA - Firefighters found the body of a 3-year-old boy after a raging fire trapped him inside his Grand Lake home, officials said Thursday.
“The mother couldn’t get to him,” Lakemont Shores Fire Chief Richard Kauffman said. “He was found at a bedroom door’s entrance.”
A woman who lived at the house woke up around midnight Tuesday after smelling smoke and saw flames in her bedroom’s door entrance, he said. The woman grabbed her 4-year-old son, who was standing at the foot of her bed, helped him escape through a window and then climbed out, Kauffman said.
As the mother ran around the house to the front door, flames and smoke prevented her from entering the house to rescue her youngest son, the fire chief said.
The wooden structure was already engulfed in flames by the time several Grand Lake-area fire departments arrived at the scene, Kauffman said.
Kauffman said the state fire marshal was on the scene Wednesday.
“From a preliminary inspection we highly suspect the fire started in a trash can,” Kauffman said.
An accidental fire that had started in a trash had been extinguished before the woman and her children went to bed, he said.
“We suspect for an unknown reason the fire reignited,” Kauffman said.
The residence is located in a secluded area of Lakemont Shores, which is located near Disney on the south end of Grand Lake. Disney is located 75 miles northeast of Tulsa in Mayes County.
