Two dead in Stann Creek Valley fire

The quiet of the Valley Community at mile eighteen and a half on the Stann Creek Valley Road was shattered today by a fire which claimed the lives of two small children. Reports are that shortly after 11:00 this morning neighbours heard the children screaming, but thought that they were being disciplined by their mother or one of their grandparents. Little did the neighbours know that the shrill sounds were the desperate last minute cries for help by three year old Zelina Williams and her brother, four year old Francisco. The children’s mother, twenty year old Florendelma Gutierrez, told police that she had left them watching TV inside a small outbuilding in the family yard and had gone to purchase ideals from a truck about two hundred yards away. She said when she returned, the structure was already engulfed in flames. The children perished inside the twenty by ten foot room, and Gutierrez was treated at the Southern Regional Hospital for superficial burns to her right arm. Fire officials are still sifting through the debris to find out what exactly caused the blaze and what trapped the children inside the room. Everything inside the building was lost, but the family’s house was not affected.