
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 14, 1995                   TAG: 9501160075
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITEr
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

2 KILLED IN SOUTHWEST ROANOKE APARTMENT FIRE

A man and a woman died Friday night in a fire in a Southwest Roanoke apartment. The toll might have been higher if not for three men who braved the smoke and heat to get people out of the building.

"We kicked down the door, and smoke just punched us," said Jeremiah McNair, 22, wincing and holding his chest.

The fire began just before 10 p.m. in the rear apartment on the south side of the second floor of a two-story brick building at 4141/2 13th Street Southwest, near the intersection at Patterson Avenue, said Roanoke District Fire Chief Bobby Slayton. There are four apartments on the second floor of the building and a video store on the first floor.

The body of Barbara Marie Hardy was found on the ground outside the building. Slayton said she appeared to have jumped. The body of an unidentified adult male was found in the apartment where the fire started. Slayton said Hardy probably died of burns, while the man likely died of smoke inhalation.

McNair, Jermaine Witcher and Carlton Walker were sitting on a porch about a block from the building that burned when they saw flames shooting out the windows at the back of the building. The three ran to the street in front of the building and yelled to the people inside. When no one responded, they kicked down the front door.

Cheryl Smith, who lives in one of the apartments, said she didn't even realize the building was on fire.

"I was in the kitchen cooking, and someone started knocking on the door and hollering that the building was on fire," Smith said. She and her husband, Douglas, got out safely.

Witcher, 21, kicked in the door of the apartment where the blaze began but could not do much once he was inside.

"I went in, but the smoke got me, and he [McNair] came in and got me out," Witcher said.

Back in the street, Witcher saw Tia Saunders, a girl he believed lived in another of the apartments, about to jump from a window. She already had thrown clothes to the sidewalk below. But by then, firefighters were on the scene and got her down with a ladder.

No cause for the fire had been determined, Slayton said, but it did not appear suspicious.

The fire will be investigated by both Roanoke police and the fire marshal.

Rescue workers checked Witcher over for burns and smoke inhalation, but said he seemed OK.

Smith said she and her husband didn't know the people that lived in the apartment where the bodies were found, but they believed it was a woman and her two children. Slayton, though, said no children had been located.

Keywords:
FATALITY

by CNB