Dezekiah Holyfield - age 3
Cedano Holyfield - age 4
Daekia Holyfield - age 7
Azquel Rankin - age 5
Andre Rankin - age 6
Those names shouldn't appear on this page, nor should the names of the older siblings, Jevon Irwin, 8 and Huedon Chambliss, also 8, whose fate may be more fortunate, but equally frightening given the events of the morning of June 12th.
Some of you probably saw the AP story, one of the less than positive things coming out of Pittsburgh during the same week that saw us host the US Open golf tournament. True to reporting on a national scale, the headline barely scratched the surface of the horror that was to unfold. It is easy enough for a national news service to simply print "5 Children Killed in a Pittsburgh Fire" to get the requisite shock and awe from the reading or viewing public, damn the details that may be further troubling, we don't have time for those. Even our local media has been tepid in broaching the subject, reminding us constantly that family was grieving and thereby giving them a pass on the hard questions that needed to follow. Even the police department would suspend their investigation into the events of the 12th, pending the funerals replete with caskets far too small, lives lost prematurely with little thought to the potential that was lost with them.
Let us go back to the early hours of that dreaded Tuesday morning. Most of us had retired for the evening, having survived another day in what has been determined to be "America's Most Livable City" by people who probably haven't spent 2 seconds here their entire lives. Roughly 1:30am that morning, the fire department received a call of a fire at 6429 Winslow Street, a residence in the city's Larimar section. It isn't the most well to do neighborhood in Pittsburgh, yet by most accounts the fire department responded with due diligence, arriving somewhere in the ballpark of about 8 minutes after receiving the call. Their efforts, while often heroic in nature, on this particular evening would leave them wondering what else they might have done, not that anything else was humanly possible. On the second floor of the residence, in a bedroom, the five names found at the beginning of this saga were found, having died in a fire that was tragic in its cost and horrific in the negligence involved.
For those that have paid close attention to what I have written so far, the question most surely had crossed your mind, for those a little more in and out on my scribblings, the obvious question has to yet to be asked or answered, that being "Where were the parents?" It is a question that people on the scene looking for who to ask about what happened I am sure asked themselves as well, as no parent or adult connected to the residence was to be found at the scene.
Shortly it would be determined who the mothers of the children were, Shakita Mangham, who lived at the residence, and her friend, Fuhara Love who dropped her children off there.
The police would bring the two mothers and the two surviving children in for questioning to determine what happened. During the questioning, Ms. Mangham said that while they weren't at home, the children were left in the custody of a babysitter, one Lashawn Smith or Smithfield. Police asked for help in locating the babysitter and through the interviews and an investigation by the fire department, the cause of the fire was determined. It appears that one of or both of the boys were playing with matches and it was this that started the fire on the second floor of the home.
An initial search for the babysitter proved fruitless, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review went as far as to print that no one in either of the families had even heard of the babysitter before the name cropped up in the investigation.
Ms. Mangham went and did what all good parents would do, she lawyered up, grabbing attorney James Ecker. For those not familiar with the local scene, Ecker is famous for taking the more high profile criminal defendants around these parts. It is akin to casting suspicion on the mothers story and begs again to question, well if no one was in the home, where were the mothers? That suspicion would become confirmed today, as the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported that the police investigation determined that no babysitter was present at the home that evening.
That question about the whereabouts of the mothers would be answered in a not to pleasant fashion, when a local pub owner said he knew where they were, because they were in his bar that night. So the mothers weren't at work, there was no pressing event that drew the mothers away from the house, rather they were out drinking, leaving 7 children no older than 8 years old to be left home completely unattended and the result of their neglect is that 5 of them are now dead. I warned you last week, that this would be pleasant, but your Asshats of the Week are Shakita Mangham and Fuhara Love.
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