MINNEAPOLIS - Valentine's Day marks one year since five children were killed in a house fire in a north Minneapolis neighborhood.
The house has been demolished on the 2800 block of Colfax Avenue North; but on the anniversary of the Valentine's Day fire, five hearts were pinned to a fence outside the empty lot, in tribute to the five young lives lost.
"It was a lot of kids. It was the worst news ever," said neighbor Broderick Williams, who vividly remembers that morning.
"I was going to work and it was just a whole bunch of fire," he said.
Flames were shooting from the second floor of the duplex. The children's father, Troy Lewis, had to jump from a window to escape, then ran back in to try to save his children. He was only able to reach two of them.
"I tried my best to try to save their sisters and brothers," Lewis said when he spoke to KARE 11 from his hospital bed in the days after the fire. "I tried to save my babies. I did."
The five children who were killed ranged in age from one to eight.
Lewis said he'd been using space heaters because of heating problems. Fire investigators later said they couldn't determine an exact cause, and said it was likely an accident.
A year later, the home is gone, but neighbor Broderick Williams says the neighborhood is closer.
"It gave us awareness of who our neighbors were, and upped the communication just a bit," Williams said.
