A 5-month-old infant died Tuesday afternoon after a car carrying three children caught fire outside a Tumwater home. By the time the flames were out, several people who tried to help were burned and taken to a nearby hospital.
Thurston County sheriff's deputies were called at about 12:10 p.m. to reports of a vehicle fire near 93rd Avenue Southeast and Tilley Road Southwest. A 911 caller said the vehicle was fully engulfed and that an infant was still strapped in a car seat inside, a detail that turned a local emergency into a death scene in minutes.
Sheriff Derek Sanders said he was “absolutely sick to my stomach today after seeing this scene,” and added that he was deeply sorry to the family and the first responders who had to experience it. He also thanked the sheriff's office chaplains for supporting those involved in what he called a hard call.
The sequence that followed was brief and brutal. The father and his three children were preparing to leave when he stepped back inside, leaving the children in the running car. Smoke began filling the vehicle a short time later. A 12-year-old child pulled a 2-year-old sibling out of the car, ran inside to alert the father, and by the time they returned outside the vehicle was fully engulfed in flames.
The father, several neighbors and emergency personnel then tried to extinguish the fire and reach the infant, but the child died at the scene. Several of the people who tried to rescue the infant suffered burns and were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Detectives and fire investigators are now trying to determine what triggered the fire. That unanswered question is what remains after the rescue effort failed: why a running car with children inside turned to flames so quickly, and why a situation that began as a departure from home ended with an infant dead before the scene could be brought under control.
