Story Created:
Mar 16, 2010 at 5:47 PM CDT
Story Updated:
Mar 16, 2010 at 5:47 PM CDT
ATF agents are now involved in a house fire that killed three children.
Investigators are calling the fire on West Olive in north Springfield suspicious.
Federal ATF investigators are trying to reconstruct how it happened.
Violet Watson and her fiance escaped the fire.
But Watson's three children, 4-year-old Devin, 5-year-old Kelsey, and 7-year-old Alexis were killed.
Their grandfather is still in critical condition.
Springfield police aren't calling it a fire scene, instead they are calling it a crime scene.
Even though the house looks charred and gutted, they say they removed a lot of evidence.
"I heard a big bang like some kicked a door or something."
It started with a bang and ended in tragedy for a north Springfield family.
"I will tell you we have collected physical evidence and most if not all of that is being taken to the crime lab for them to analyze," says David Millsap with the Springfield Police Department.
What exactly was found is not being released.
Tuesday ATF agents are reconstructing the event and so are neighbors.
"The young lady was in the front yard. She was screaming her kids were in the house."
Douglas Hanson lives across the street from 1711 West Olive Street.
When Douglas saw flames shooting out through the front of the house he thought maybe he could enter through the back, so he ran across the street from his house, went between two fences, and ended up here in the backyard.
That's where he ran into the children's mother's fiance.
"He said he couldn't get in so that's where I stopped. I figured he couldn't get in, I couldn't get in," Douglas explains.
Later hewatched as the three children and their grandfather were carried from the burning building and into ambulances.
"There was no movement- they were limp."
Then he took their mother and her fiance- neighbors he'd never met- to the hospital.
"They were more concerned about stopping, getting a pack of cigarettes and soda. I wouldn't have did that," he remembers.
He wasn't sure the family did enough.
"I would have come out burnt."
He's not sure he did enough either.
"I got grandkids that age and it just hurts me to see little kids get hurt like that. I'm 50 years old... They didn't have a chance. I've been here 50 years- let me go."
; "Click for StormVision Doppler Radar")
Most Viewed