Collierville, Dec 26 :
Three Indian teenaged siblings were among four killed in a fire at a house in Collierville, US, two days before Christmas, according to media reports.
A woman Kari Coudriet of Collierville, and Sharron, 17, Joy, 15, and Aaron, 14 — teen siblings of the Naik family from India — all died in the fire, said a statement released by the Coudriet’s Collierville Bible Church.
“A fire started around 11 o’clock pm at the Coudriet home. The Coudriet family was hosting, housing, and celebrating Christmas with three teenagers attending an Academy here in the States. The Naik family are missionaries in India that our church supports,” the statement said.
Kari’s husband Danny and their son Cole were able to make it out of the home. Both are expected to make full recovery
The Church statement said that the family of Indian teenagers was on its way to the US from India. The parents were identified as Srinivas Naik and Sujatha of Gurraputhanda of Neredugommu block in Nalgonda district of Telangana.
Srinivas had worked as a pastor in the US and returned to Nalgonda last year. The children, however, stayed back in the US for studies at French Camp Academy in Mississippi. The children were at the Coudriet residence to celebrate Christmas.
The fire started just before 11 pm on December 23 and took 20-30 minutes to come under control, said Collierville Fire Chief Buddy Billings. Heavy smoke was billowing from the home when firefighters arrived, the colliervilleherald.net reported.
Collierville Mayor Stan Joyner said the tragedy is still under investigation. “They’re still looking at what the cause of it was,” he said. “I was told when they arrived they did not hear any smoke alarms going off … so you just never know.”
Local 24 News reported there were no working smoke detectors downstairs and only one working smoke detector upstairs.
“It was chaotic… The house went up really, really fast,” website localmemphis.com quoted a neighbour Scott Symons as saying.
“It was just frantic trying to figure out how many people were in the house; I knew there were multiple kids there,” Symons said.
As he tried to assist before fire trucks arrived, Symons saw two people make it out: 13-year-old Cole Coudriet – who jumped out of a window – and his father, Danny Coudriet.
“He was covered head to toe in black,” Symons was quoted by the website as saying.
