A fire raced through a Rogers Park townhome early Thursday, killing a family of four, including a boy and their dog, police, witnesses and an alderperson say.
Elise Adu lives two units down from where the fire happened, in the 7000 block of North Paulina Street and woke up to her neighbors screaming out their window for help and that one neighbor “didn’t have their phone.”
Adu had one thought come to mind as everything unfolded around her — “This cannot be real.”
A 13-year-old boy, two women, 69 and 46, and a 22-year-old man were found unresponsive at the two-story townhome around 4:15 a.m., Chicago police said.
They were taken to area hospitals where they were pronounced dead, police said.
"It's a horrific tragedy to lose an entire family,'' Ald. Maria Hadden (49th) told the Sun-Times.
“They had a dog they walked and a lot of people knew them,” Hadden said. “They were a lovely family. It hits really hard.” Hadden said their pup also died in the fire.
Hadden said the boy attended Kilmer International Academy, 6700 N. Greenview Ave. The school declined to comment and referred questions to CPS.
As the tragedy unfolded, Adu raced to tell her parents.
“I grabbed my phone and ran to my parents’ room and said “something’s happening outside, we need to call 911,” Adu, 27, told the Sun-Times.
“I went back into the house to make sure we all got out, I put a leash on my dog to bring him out and then we started going to the neighbors, telling them they needed to get out," Adu said.
“I kept thinking that if someone’s inside, they’re not surviving that,” Adu said.
Adu saw the family of four — a woman, her daughter and two grandchildren, every day and often left her keys with them while on family trips.
The family always helped host block parties, according to Adu.“They were always doing something,” Adu said. “I feel like they were always celebrating life the most.”
Several neighbors called the fire “devastating” and tearfully mourned as authorities investigated.
The inside of the home was mostly burnt and visible, and the faint smell of smoke still permeated the air around 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning.
Family members gathered along one side of the crime scene tape, while neighbors sat together on the opposite side.
Some relatives bellowed emotional wails that echoed in the air as they embraced each other.
Anita Miller has lived directly next door to where the fire happened since 1978. She was making her way up the stairs when she noticed “very thin smoke” in her stairway.
That’s when she made her way outside, where she has been wrapped in a blanket well into Thursday morning.
“I’ve lived here for a very long time and there has never been anything like this,” Miller said. “I’m just sorry that we never got to know each other. We shared a wall and I didn’t really know them very well at all.”
It was not known immediately where or how the fire started, a fire department spokesperson said. Hadden said there was no evidence of foul play.
“It was a well-constructed building with firewalls, that’s one of the reasons the fire didn’t spread.
Hadden said each unit is privately owned and the family did not have a landlord.
Neighbors in the units on either side of theirs are temporarily displaced and staying with relatives, according to Hadden.
It remains under investigation.
