12-y-o perishes in fire

A 12-year old girl is now dead and seven family members homeless, following a fire of unknown origin which completely destroyed her grandmother's home in Potosi district, Johns Hall, St James, on Monday.

The child has been identified as Hemmecia Greenwood, otherwise called 'Safoy'. Reports by the police are that shortly after 3 p.m., fire was seen coming from a section of the five-apartment board and concrete house. An alarm was raised and the fire department summoned. When the firefighters reached the scene, the entire house was seen engulfed in flames, and it took them more than two hours to put out the blaze, which completely destroyed the house and all its contents. After the firemen completed cooling-down operations, Hemmecia's remains were found beneath the rubble. Hemmecia's grandmother, Paulette Coates, could barely find words to express herself.

Still in disbelief

"Mi head nuh stay good right yah now, is a family of seven a wih, but the child that died is my granddaughter," she said. "She really lives with her mother and father in Salters Hill, but they stay wid me during the days until dem go to school from here. Den dem mom, who is my daughter, pick them up back during the afternoon." Coates was still in disbelief as she related how she heard about the fire.

"My husband was in another bedroom sleeping, and he said a the fire wake him, and by the time him run out him see the other kids outside playing, so he thought she was outside with them also," she said. "It was then that dem hear screams an him realise seh she still inside. Him seh him try every way to go back in, but him could not go back in because of the fire."

THE STAR also learnt that Hemmecia's father collapsed after he stumbled upon her charred remains and had to be rushed to the Cornwall Regional Hospital where he was admitted in serious condition. Superintendent Dolphin Doman of the St James Fire Department said that the house was not insured and neither the cause of the fire nor a damage estimate had yet been ascertained.