On Sunday afternoon (April 23), a single-family home caught fire that left five people dead. One resident, DaJuana Green, who lost her son and grandson in the blaze, said that she stepped out of the house to purchase smoke detectors.
In a brief statement to reporters on the scene, Green said, “That’s what I was going to do, going to get smoke alarms, because my smoke alarms stopped working. I was going to buy brand new ones and put them up.” Her son, Rashawn Matthews, was 10-years-old. Green’s grandson, Chayce Lipford, was two. The other family members who passed away were Jada Foxworth, 16, Destiny Dones, 20, and friend Melody Edwards, 17, the New York Daily News reports.
Melody Edwards’ mother, Rosezetta Edwards, said her daughter was a friend of Green’s son, and visited the house that day, the New York Times states. The teen’s mother said if she could rewind time, she would plead with her daughter to stay home.
“Who thinks they are going to wake up on such a beautiful Sunday…And if I should’ve, could’ve, would’ve — I would have stopped her, said she should stay,” Edwards said. “But who could ever have known?”
An investigation as to what caused the fire is still ongoing.