By Rummana Hussain
Chicago Sun Times
Copyright 2006 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
A pair of cousins died in an early-morning fire Saturday that spread from an abandoned apartment a floor below the one shared by the two West Side men.
Mario Montgomery, 25, and 22-year-old Lushaae Upshire were asleep when their third-floor apartment at 11 N. Sacramento erupted in flames before dawn, relatives said.
Firefighters found Upshire, a Crane High School graduate and janitor, on the couch where he dozed off after playing video games, the men’s cousin Brittany Renfro said. Montgomery, a church musician who worked in construction, was discovered in his bed.
There were smoke detectors throughout the three-story building, including in the victims’ apartment, but none of them worked, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Will Knight said.
Building manager David Hart inspected the site Saturday. He said he was “distraught” over the deaths. However, he would not comment on the building’s condition before the tragedy.
2 LEAP OUT WINDOW, WITNESSES SAY
Two Harrison District police officers patrolling the neighborhood spotted the fire around 4 a.m. and called it in, Chicago Police spokesman Marcel Bright said. They, two other beat officers and a sergeant ran into the burning building and helped evacuate most of the five families who were displaced by the blaze, breaking down a door in the process, Bright said.
Knight said the cause of the fire was still being investigated by the police Bomb and Arson unit.
But many residents said squatters often used the vacant second-floor unit for illegal activities and may have ignited the fire when lighting drug paraphernalia. Two people were spotted jumping out of a window, some said.
A few residents tiptoed over the alley strewn with broken glass and debris Saturday afternoon to fetch umbrellas, stuffed animals, clothes and other personal items that were untouched by the fire. Many were planning to stay with relatives or in temporary housing provided by the Red Cross.
“I just have to start all over again,” Georgia Thompson, 34, said, glancing at the soot-covered second-floor apartment she shared with her boyfriend and the couple’s two children for nearly a decade.
“It’s a nerve-racking thing,” said Ollie Lovett, 52, who lived on the first floor.
Several blocks away, nearly a hundred of Montgomery’s and Upshire’s relatives gathered outside the Peace, Mercy & Charity Church, 105 N. Laramie, to comfort one another and arrange funeral services.
‘IT’S LIKE LOSING BROTHERS’
Montgomery’s family was still recovering from the fatal shooting in April of his musician cousin, 18-year-old Terrell Bosley, who was gunned down before choir practice in front of the Lights of Zion Ministries, 11636 S. Halsted.
“We just kind of got over that, and then this happened,” said Mary Jenkins, a relative of Montgomery’s and Upshire’s.
Montgomery, an Austin High School graduate, was a prankster who played drums at the church and at the nearby Prince of Peace Missionary Baptist Church where Upshire’s uncle serves as a pastor, Renfro said.
“He was the best drummer in the world,” she said. “He lived for those drums.”
Upshire was more quiet, still nursing a broken heart from his father’s death on his 18th birthday. Both victims were described as being extremely close to their family.
“It’s like losing brothers,” Renfro said.