Five children died Sunday during an early-morning fire at a day care in Pennsylvania.
The owner of a day care in Erie, Pennsylvania, is hospitalized, and five young children are dead after a fire ripped through the three-story house. The Erie Times-News reported that four of the five were siblings and that the kids were staying at the day care because their parents were working overnight Sunday. It is not clear if the fifth child was staying at the facility or was a family member of the owners.
The fire was reported at 1:12 a.m. at Harris Family Day Care. Two other children, aged 17 and 12 years old, reportedly managed to escape the blaze by climbing onto the first-floor roof and jumping to the ground.
Valerie Lockett-Slupski said that four of her grandchildren, aged eight, six, four, and 10 months old, died in the fire. She said that the family had been sending the kids to the day care for almost a year.
“So we are all at a loss, trying to figure out how this happened,” Lockett-Slupski said Sunday afternoon standing across from the fire-ravaged residence.
According to the website for the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Human Services, the residence is listed as a family provider childcare facility that operates 24 hours a day. Records show that the day care was last inspected in December.
It remains unclear what caused the fire and the scene is under active investigation with police guard on hand.
NEW: Five small children were killed and an adult was left in critical condition following a house fire in northwestern Pennsylvania. https://t.co/ix4U1GTiWu pic.twitter.com/TAQqzBreAx
— ABC News (@ABC) August 11, 2019
