5-year-old’s grandfather hospitalized after neighbors rescue him
By David Doege and Bob Purvis
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Copyright 2007 The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
TOWN OF HARTFORD, Wis. — A 5-year-old boy was killed and his grandfather was critically burned when their Town of Hartford home caught fire late Saturday.
The blaze on Lee Road near the Hartford Golf Club was reported at 10:55 p.m. Saturday, and when the first emergency personnel arrived at the scene, the home already was engulfed in flames, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. Robin Lulich, 51, had escaped, and her husband, George, 53, had been pulled from the house by neighbors before rescuers arrived. Robin Lulich frantically told arriving firefighters that their grandson, Maxwell Lulich, was still inside.
Mike Myer and his neighbor Jay Selden were in Myer’s backyard, adjacent to the Lulich home, when they saw the flames and at first thought they were coming from a backyard bonfire.
“Then we could see there were flames coming off the house. So we ran over there and called 911,” Myer said. “We heard a woman yelling ‘Help, there’s someone inside.’ ”
Myer and Selden ran around to the other side of the house to find Robin Lulich yelling, “George is in there! George is in there!”
Inside, they found George Lulich lying on the ground, unresponsive and badly burned. After they pulled him to safety, Robin Lulich told them that her grandson was trapped upstairs.
By then, another neighbor propped a ladder against the house, climbed up and broke out a second-story window, but the smoke and flames were overwhelming. None of the neighbors could see the boy, Myer said.
“We knew there was a young child in there, and we kept hoping they could get him out,” said Joe Soltis, who lives next door to the Lulich family.
“That was tough on everybody there,” Soltis said. “It was very unsettling.”
Firefighters also were driven back by intense smoke and flames while trying to get to the second floor, according to the Sheriff’s Department. Once the blaze was under control, firefighters recovered the boy’s body, the department said.
An autopsy was pending.
The grandfather was taken to Columbia St. Mary’s Milwaukee Campus for treatment of “severe burns to most of his body,” according to a department news release. The woman was listed in satisfactory condition at Aurora Medical Center in Hartford, where she was being treated for burns to her hands and arms, the release said.
Sunday afternoon, windows at the home were boarded up and yellow police tape cordoned off the area. The front yard, where neighbors saw 5-year-old Maxwell playing with his grandmother just a few hours before the blaze, was littered with blackened insulation and other debris.
Firefighters from Slinger, St. Lawrence and Richfield helped Hartford firefighters and remained on the scene until 4 a.m.
Investigators from the state Division of Criminal Investigation and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting the Sheriff’s Department and Hartford firefighters in determining the cause of the blaze.