Mother Of 3 Kids Left Alone In Home That Caught Fire Turns Herself In To Police
By Natasha Brown
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The mother of three young children who police say were left alone and had to be rescued by neighbors after a fire broke out inside the home, has turned herself in to Philadelphia Police Friday night.
The fire broke out at about 7 p.m. Thursday inside a home in 1700 block of Newkirk Street in North Philadelphia (See Related Story).
Nearly 24 hours after a fire at her home, Lorraine Wilson turned herself in to police at the Special Victims Unit. She was arraigned Saturday afternoon and bail has been set at $75,000.
Officers had plenty of questions for the mother of three who allegedly left her children, ages two, four and nine-years-old at home alone when a fire broke out inside.
"Quite frankly we were very, very close to a catastrophe," Captain John Darby of Philadelphia Police said.
"They bust the window, jumped in, got cut up. Grabbed the kids and brought them out," neighbor Kennesha Watson said.
Watson captured video as neighbors sprang into action, rescuing the children one by one during the blaze. A neighbor using a bat to break the window, never thinking of his own safety.
"You standing out here looking at all this smoke and all this fire, you just thinking about the kids. That's the whole thing. You're like I want to get these kids out of here," rescuer Tyrone Mitchell said.
"He just jumped through the window. He wasn't afraid. He didn't think about his life. All he thought about was there's three babies in that house," the rescuer's mother Crystal Hyman said.
Family members of the children credit the nine-year-old with helping to get his younger siblings to a front window, and neighbors took over from there.
"He said the lights were on and he couldn't even see upstairs, it was just so smoky and dark," aunt Kevona Shelton said.
Police believe that the fire may have been sparked by the four-year-old little boy playing with a lighter. Meantime, police won't say yet if the mother has been charged with any crime or where she was during the time of this fire.