Children die in fire on Electric Avenue
It has happened again, two more children have burned to death in their home after being left alone. This time however, there were reports to Social Services that the children had been neglected in the past. The report did not come from neighbors, but from staff members at the Karl Heusner Memorial who treated one of the children for malnutrition and their mother for spousal abuse. But the red flag sent up at the hospital didn’t prevent Wednesday night’s tragedy, in fact it resulted in little more than a recommendation that the family be given foodstuff. The neighbors allege that it was not money but drugs and physical abuse that ultimately lead to the death of the two children. Janelle Chanona reports.
Sherlene Williams, Neighbor
“Well I was in my bed sleeping and I heard the crying, the children crying and I thought the mother was beating them so I get up and when I look through the side of my house I saw bright light and a lot of bubbling sound and thing. I rushed to my back door and I see the flame and I run in and I tell my husband, “Williams, those children in there are burning up! My God, the house is on fire.”
Around midnight last night, the neighbors of house number 8380 on Electric Avenue, watched and listened helplessly as flames engulfed the home, burning to death four-year-old George Rowland Banner Jr. and his two-year-old brother Deon Allen Rowland. No one was able to get inside to save the children. According to police, sometime after eleven p.m., the children were left alone in the house while their father, George Rowland Sr. went to close his store on Haulze Street, several blocks away. When he returned, there was nothing he could do for his children. While neighbor Sherlene Williams was the only one willing to go on camera, she is not the only one who says this is not the first time the children were left alone.
Sherlene Williams
“And the mother just constantly leave them and go at night, sometime they “bawl, bawl, bawl, bawl, bawl,” but unfortunately this time, they suffered.”
Q: “Were these children often left alone?”
Sherlene Williams
“Often, often, often leave alone, often. The mother never have a job right, she was a domestic mother and her life just start to get very disruptive after she went on drugs and she started to sell the kids’ things. Sell toys, sell their food and thing and the father never pay no interest much. He provide for them, see they have their little food and thing but he no there as a father should to take care of them and thing, so you would say they neglect the children.”
Williams alleges that the home was often the scene of domestic violence.
Sherlene Williams
“It’s often that he usually, on Saturdays and Sundays, they would get into a big dispute about maybe she sell the kids’ things and so. And people tell him things and then he beat up her. Cause Saturday they had a dispute and he put her out and she went and she said she wasn’t at home. She says from Saturday she wasn’t occupying the residence no more.”
Janelle Chanona
“Could the death of these children have been avoided? Neighbors tell News Five abuse and neglect were nothing new to these children and that they had seen Social Services visit the family.”
Sherlene Williams
“Because Social came one time and we thought they were going to take them away but they didn’t. They just left them right there on the care of the parents.”
Dr. Victor Rosado, Head of the Pediatrics Department at the K.H.M.H. says he sent a medical referral, to the Human Development Office twice last year, the first time in October and the second in December after he treated the younger child, Deon Rowland, for severe malnutrition. He says malnutrition is an indication of neglect.
Dr. Victor Rosado, Head of Pediatrics
“I don’t recall who brought in the child but I do recall that the child, we didn’t find the mother for the first twenty-four hours and she came in and she actually was hospitalized at that time because she was a victim of domestic violence at that time.
By the severity of the malnutrition and the fact that the mother was hospitalized at that time, there were obvious flags going up that there were abuse and neglect in that home.
If they go back to the same environment where there is abuse and neglect then this outcome that we have here today is expected.”
The Director of Human Development, Roy Bowen says a home assessment was carried out on the Rowland home but the recommendation by the human development officer was that financial assistance, in the form of foodstuff, be given to the family. Bowen stresses that the removal of child from his or her family is used as a last resort by the department. The report did not indicate what neighbors so readily told us that there was a drug problem in the home. Bowen says the department responds to every call about abuse but adds that follow-up visits are often difficult because of heavy caseloads. Dr. Rosado feels that in this case, the children needed protection.
Dr. Victor Rosado
“It’s very disappointing, very frustrating that having had the children come into our institutions we should have been able to offer them some sort of protection.”
Sherlene Williams
“The children they never had to suffer like this. They were wonderful kids. People in the neighborhood no have nothing bad to say about them. They were very nice kids. Things like this they say you no know who to blame but I blame the parents. These children are put in their care, they are the guardians, they supposed to say I have children, let me change my lifestyle and make I start to look about my children. But they didn’t do that, they just leave these children many a times on their own.
Only the cry of the children I heard. That’s the only thing that stays in my mind, the cry of the children. And then nobody couldn’t help them because the house was already so consumed with the fire. Nobody couldn’t, couldn’t get in there.”
Janelle Chanona for News Five.
The Fire Department says Rowland Sr. has told them candles were used to light the home but insists he blew it out before leaving the house. Fire Chief Henry Baizar says the department will continue to investigate the cause of the fire. Although both parents had been detained for questioning earlier today, at news time tonight, the mother of the children has been released. The father is still in police custody.
