By Sarah Horner
The Duluth News-Tribune, Minn.
DULUTH, Minn. — Three people, including a child, died in a fire that engulfed a Lincoln Park/West End home Sunday morning.
Duluth police and firefighters responded to a fire at a triplex at 226 Piedmont Ave. about 10 a.m. Sunday, where they found heavy smoke throughout the residence. Authorities believe the fire was mainly contained to the kitchen of one of the units.
Three people found inside were immediately evacuated but it was too late, Assistant Fire Chief Richard Mattson said. Despite resuscitation efforts, two of the victims, Adrian Carter and Heather Johnson, died at the scene. The third victim, Johnson’s son Kaiden, died in an ambulance on the way to St. Mary’s Hospital.
Mattson said he was not sure if the victims were trapped or sleeping when the fire broke out. The cause of the fire is under investigation. The building and its contents sustained about $80,000 of damage.
Johnson and her son had been renting an apartment for about four years, said Eugene Frisk of Robbinsdale, Minn., the owner of the building. Johnson and her son were the only tenants in the building at the time of the fire. Frisk would see them from time to time when he would come up for repairs.
"[Kaiden] was a neat little kid. Whenever I was doing something, he always wanted to help,” Frisk said. He added that he thought the boy was about 5 years old. Frisk said he did not know Carter. “The whole thing is a miserable situation; I lost a house, and these people lost their lives.”
Neighbors of Johnson and her son said they didn’t know much about the family.
“We would say ‘Hi’ and stuff, but that was about it,” said William Buhs, a neighbor who was barricaded in his house most of Sunday while police conducted their investigation. The whole street was temporarily closed off, and the house is surrounded by yellow tape.
Nicole Overstreet, another neighbor, said she would occasionally see Johnson and her son in their backyard or when they came over to play with her dogs.
“You can see [Kaiden’s] blue truck back there,” she said. “I have to wake up tomorrow and remember I won’t see him playing outside anymore. ... I know I didn’t really know them, but he was just a little kid. It’s not fair. It’s just a horrible, horrible thing.”
Overstreet said she hopes the community will come together to honor the victims.
“Maybe put out flowers or something, just do some kind of memorial that shows we care and not just go on with our lives,” she said.
Carter’s friends and family were grieving at a family member’s house elsewhere in the Lincoln Park/West End neighborhood Sunday evening and declined to comment.
Sunday’s deaths are the second, third and fourth fire fatalities in Duluth this year. A 66-year-old man, Craig Gene Clemens, died in a fire at 721 N. Eighth Ave. E on March 31.
It has been a much busier-than-normal year for structure fires in Duluth. At the time of the March 31 fatal fire, Assistant Fire Chief Jim Ray said that in his nearly three decades with the department, he couldn’t remember how many years it had been since the department had to fight such a large number of big blazes. He estimated there had been about double the normal amount of sizeable fires.
“I don’t remember a stretch that had so many fires and so many varying causes,” he said.
There was only one fire fatality in Duluth in 2007 — a 57-year-old man who died in a fire at 2626 Jefferson Street on May 28.
Copyright 2008 Duluth News-Tribune