The wife of a Chicago Fire Department firefighter died Thursday night, two days after the firefighter responded to a fire in his own home and tried to save her with CPR in front of the family’s Montclare house Tuesday night.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office confirmed Friday that Summer Day-Stewart, 36, had died. Her son, 7-year-old Ezra Stewart, died Wednesday night. The couple’s two other children, a 2-year-old girl and a 7-year-old girl, were last listed in critical condition.
The firefighter, Walter Stewart, heard his own address as the location of the blaze Tuesday night. A Chicago Fire Department chief drove him from a fire station 5 miles away. First responders found Day-Stewart and the three kids unconscious from smoke inhalation and in grave condition.
Outside his burning home, the young firefighter performed CPR on his now-dead wife, Fire Department spokesperson Larry Langford said.
“It’s gotta be like hell,” Langford said. “We’re doing all we can to support him.”
There were no new updates on the condition of Stewarts two other children, Langford said Friday.
The investigation into the fire, which officials believe began in the kitchen, was undetermined and suspended Friday, though it remained possible that investigators would do a forensic analysis of artifacts from the fire, Langford said.
The veteran fire spokesperson said he had never seen anything like this nightmare scenario during his many years with the department. Firefighters’ homes have caught on fire, he said. Even fire stations have caught fire, he added.
But Langford said he couldn’t remember the department facing a tragedy like this.
“As long as I’ve been associated with fires, I can’t fathom what he’s going through. It’s just unbelievable. I can’t even think of what it feels like,” he said.
The department is raising money to help Stewart’s family face the “unspeakable tragedy” through its charity, Ignite the Spirit.
March 10, 2023 Chief of the FDNY Fire Academy Assistant Chief Charles “Chuck” Downey and Assistant Chief Kevin Brennan are the latest to send requests to the commissioner.
Two more staff chiefs at FDNY headquarters have asked to be demoted and put back in the field as the shakeup in the department continues, the Daily News has learned.
The two new requests from Assistant Chief Kevin Brennan and Deputy Assistant Chief Charles “Chuck” Downey, the chief of the FDNY Fire Academy, landed on FDNY Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh’s desk this week as the department went ahead with three demotions that prompted several top chiefs to ask for a drop in rank, two sources with knowledge of the drama said.
It brings the number of demoted or dissatisfied chiefs looking for a way out of headquarters to about 10, although the number couldn’t be officially confirmed. There are only 23 staff chiefs in the entire FDNY, sources said.
“At this point it’s easier to count the number of people who didn’t [ask for demotions] instead of the people who have,” one source said.
The demotion requests are a moot point, however, at least in the short term. Kavanagh hasn’t signed off on any of the requests. She’s asked the chiefs to hang on for three more months while she “rights the ship” and they have agreed, sources said.
The turmoil in the department’s upper ranks came into full view last month after The News broke a story about how two top uniformed FDNY officials stepped down to protest Kavanagh demoting three other chiefs.
Assistant Chiefs Michael Gala, Joseph Jardin and Fred Schaaf have been demoted and detailed back to FDNY headquarters, but their new roles are not clear, according to a department source with knowledge of the situation.
The undercurrent of distrust came to a head on Feb. 3, when Kavanagh demoted Gala, Jardin and Schaaf, and held a meeting with the remaining staff chiefs, complaining that they hadn’t brought her any new ideas.
“Folks say we have to to have our car with us at all times,” one chief asked at the meeting. “But if I have to go into Nassau for something personal, now I have to have my car with me. How do I balance that?”
Kavanagh wasn’t pleased that her requests were landing on deaf ears.
“Is it fair to say that despite the point I made, the majority of the questions here today were about pay and vacation and cars?” Kavanagh asked the chiefs, according to the recording.
After hearing that Gala, Jardin and Schaaf were demoted, several other chiefs, including Chief of Department John Hodgens, the FDNY’s most senior uniformed official, Chief of Fire Operations John Esposito and Chiefs Michael Massucci and Frank Leeb all requested to be demoted and put back in the field in solidarity.
At about the same time, two other chiefs made the same request, but not in writing, sources said.
The chiefs filed a lawsuit against Kavanagh and the city claiming the demotions have left the city’s firefighting forces with an “unimaginable level of unpreparedness” — including leaving the department without anyone who has ever led the scene at a five-alarm fire.
“Our leadership team has centuries of combined experience within the FDNY and the department’s chiefs are fully committed to keeping our members and the city safe,” an FDNY spokeswoman said Thursday. “To be clear, no chief position is vacant or unoccupied. New Yorkers can rest assured that, under Commissioner Kavanagh’s leadership, the FDNY remains fully prepared to keep New Yorkers safe and respond to all emergencies.”
Whenever Billy Moon marched in a local St. Patrick’s Day parade, he always wore a special helmet.
It was a custom green helmet that he painted himself.
Tragically, Moon,47, was killed in a training accident back in December when he fell 20 feet while preparing for a drill inside Rescue Company 2 in Brooklyn.
He and his crew were training on how to rescue window washers trapped on immobile platforms hundreds of feet in the air, FDNY officials said.
Moon joined the FDNY in 2002 and spent most of his career at Ladder Company 133 in Jamaica, Queens, before moving to Rescue 2, FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said at the time. He also served as a member of the Islip Fire Department on Long Island and was their Chief of Department in 2017.
So, when the Islip Fire Department was asked to march in last weekend’s annual East Islip Saint Patrick’s Day parade, they decided to pay tribute to their ex-chief.
The Islip Fire Department Band performed in identical helmets to the one made by their brother.
The band even stopped during the parade to play a song for Moon’s family, which they shared on their Facebook page.
Mar. 9—A large fire at a vacant house on North Broadway Street where five people were found dead Wednesday is one of the deadliest in Dayton.
“Five total victims have been located at this time, making this one of the most tragic fire incidents for loss of life in the history of the City of Dayton,” the Dayton Fire Department said Wednesday night.
The victims have not been identified. The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office is working with the fire department to determine their causes of death.
It was the second fire after which a person was found dead in Dayton this year. On Sunday, 71-year-old Darlene Alston was found dead following a house fire in the 300 block of Ashwood Avenue. That fire also remains under investigation.
While the causes of death in this week’s fires are still being determined, there were six fire fatalities reported over the previous three years.
Dayton had three deadly fires last year, one in 2021 and two in 2020. Each fire resulted in one fatality.
Fire crews responded at 3:58 a.m. to the fire in the 500 block of North Broadway Street and were at the scene for about 18 hours.
Responding crews could see heavy smoke from more than a mile away and arrived to find a large two-story house with heavy fire showing from the back of the house on both floors. Crews went inside to search for any occupants and to control the fire.
Within four minutes of arriving and entering the house, the incident commander ordered all crews out due to the intense fire conditions and concerns of a collapse, according to the fire department.
Once the fire was under control, the incident commander called for the house to be demolished. During demolition Wednesday morning, crews found the first victim in the debris near the back of the house and demolition was immediately halted.
The coroner’s office responded and two cadaver dogs were requested to assist with the search for any additional bodies.
A second body was discovered Wednesday afternoon, and the third was recovered at about 6:45 p.m. The corner’s office confirmed later Wednesday night that five total bodies had been recovered.
The house where the bodies were found was vacant and hadn’t had gas service since 2013. However, neighbors reported seeing people come and go from the residence.
Demolition at the scene continued Thursday morning. Fire crews are continuing to investigate the cause of the fire.
A multi-jurisdictional investigation that linked a retired Maryland municipal police chief to a decade-long string of arsons statewide passed its first test Thursday, with a Howard County jury finding him guilty of setting four fires there.
David Michael Crawford, 71, was convicted of eight counts of attempted first-degree murder — one charge for each of the people home during fires in Elkridge and Ellicott City — three counts of first-degree arson and one count of malicious burning.
Howard County State’s Attorney Rich Gibson said his office would seek to have Crawford, a career policeman, punished with more than eight life terms in prison at his June 27 sentencing.
“This person should have been a guardian and a protector, but instead he was a menace,” Gibson said.
Authorities allege Crawford is responsible for setting a dozen fires in six counties from 2011 and 2020, targeting people who he perceived to have slighted him in matters both personal or professional.
The state typically isn’t allowed to tell the jury about crimes other than the one a defendant is standing trial for, but Howard County prosecutors said they needed to put on evidence from the string of arsons to prove Crawford set the fires in their jurisdiction in 2017 and 2018. A judge granted their request to show evidence from the other fires.
Nine people whose houses or cars were set ablaze testified at Crawford’s Howard County trial, along with fire investigators from other jurisdictions. Pictures and videos of the fires revealed a pattern: The arsonist always struck in the dark, between 1 and 4:30 a.m. He arrived in a silver sedan, poured gasoline onto his targets and set houses, garages or cars ablaze.
The victims had something else in common: All were named in a coded list police found on Crawford’s phone — an index used to keep a tally of the number of fires he set at his targets’ properties. He typed the number three, for example, next to his stepson’s name and allegedly put flame to the stepson’s property as many times.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at the defendant’s criminal resume,” Assistant State’s Attorney Patricia Cecil told the jury in closing arguments.
The jury rendered its verdict after deliberating for about five hours. Crawford’s trial spanned a week, with the state and defense submitting hundreds of pieces of evidence.
In March, Crawford entered an Alford plea — maintaining his innocence, but conceding there was enough evidence to convict him — to arson in Frederick County. He has pending charges in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.
Crawford’s “reign of terror,” as Cecil put it, began months after he was forced to resign as Laurel police chief, with the first arson targeting the city administrator who oversaw the police department.
He arrived at Martin Flemion’s property in Laurel around 1:30 a.m. May 28, 2011, according to prosecutors. He doused Flemion’s city-issued Ford Explorer and personal car with gasoline but caught fire himself while igniting the accelerant, and was only able to set the Explorer afire.
Crawford’s injury proved to be a compelling piece of circumstantial evidence at trial.
Police raided Crawford’s house in Ellicott City in 2021, recovering troves of digital evidence from his computers, hard drives, tablets and cell phones. On one device, investigators found a post to a medical forum 17 days after the fire outside Flemion’s house. Crawford wrote that he was treating an approximately two-week-old burn to his calf.
“when i stand and do not move the leg, it feels like it is burning. when does that discomfort go away?” he asked in the online post.
Ten years after the fire, a scar remained on the lower part of Crawford’s left leg.
At trial, defense attorney Robert Bonsib did not challenge that any of the fires were intentionally set but argued the state hadn’t proven his client ignited them. He also downplayed the significance of the blazes at occupied homes, saying the arsonist hadn’t intended to kill anyone.
After the verdict, Bonsib said Crawford would appeal.
“Whenever a prosecutor is allowed to put 12 different incidents before a jury, it’s a very challenging matter,” Bonsib said. “Mr. Crawford, during his career in law enforcement, was well liked and did well, and it’s very sad ending to that career.”
No physical evidence — DNA, fingerprints, hair fibers — tied Crawford to the arsons. Instead, prosecutors relied on his digital footprint.
Crawford’s internet history showed he looked up his targets’ addresses before striking. He made calendar appointments marking the dates of some fires. He searched for news articles about the crimes after. When he knew the victims, he reached out to them or their neighbors asking for details.
“There’s your fingerprints,” Assistant State’s Attorney Scott Hammond said of the digital evidence.
Some people whose properties burned testified to small disagreements, or strained relationships, with Crawford. Others, like his chiropractors, whose Elkridge house Crawford set ablaze with the the couple, their children and a relative inside, couldn’t even think of any tension with him. Crawford’s stepson suspected him after the first fire at his house.
Evelyn Henderson testified that she worked with him on a Howard County school redistricting initiative she spearheaded in their Ellicott City neighborhood. The morning after she interrupted him at a big community meeting, Crawford sent out an organizational flow chart of their committee placing Henderson at the bottom.
Months later, she woke up in the middle of the night to a smoke-filled bedroom and a garage fire that reeked of gasoline. Her husband and daughter were home at the time.
Crawford maintained friendly contact with the people whose properties he burned. Whether it was under the pretext of trying to avoid a fire in his own garage or offering to help investigate the arson, Crawford asked about the cause and origin of each blaze.
“Arson is one of the most difficult crimes to solve,” Justin Scherstrom recalled his stepfather telling him after each of the three fires at Scherstrom’s properties.
Henderson said redesigning the house was her family’s way of coping with their loss.
Once they started to rebuild, Crawford kept tabs on the construction.
In September 2018, Henderson asked for help on social media getting power restored to their almost-rebuilt home. Crawford responded to her post.
About a week before the family was supposed to move back in, the house was burned down. It was completely destroyed.
The Hendersons were among the arson victims who packed the courtroom awaiting the verdict. Arson investigators from around the state who in 2019 finally recognized a connection between what for years seemed liked random and unrelated fires watched, too.
Crawford’s daughter, who accused her father of terrorizing her for years to get custody of her child, sat through the entire Howard County trial. Carrie Turner said the verdict made her feel “vindicated.”
“My dad used to say ‘many hands make light work,’” Turner said. “In this case, many hands make justice work.”
Michelle Hake’s sister had been snowed in for days, alone in her Big Bear home. Her family said it wasn’t clear just how urgent her medical needs had become during last month’s record-setting snowstorms and the treacherous days that followed.
She “needed medical attention in the midst of the storm, and we could not get that to her,” Hake said. Her family called for an emergency wellness check Monday.
“We were too late,” she said.
Deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department found Hake’s sister dead just after 9 a.m., agency spokesperson Mara Rodriguez said. A cause of death has not been determined, but Rodriguez said there were no signs of trauma or suspicious circumstances.
Hake, who requested that her adult sister not be identified, declined to expound on her sister’s medical history or what might have led to her death. But she said she had no doubt that her sister would have gotten the care she needed had the storms not trapped her inside.
“We were trying to get someone to go check on her,” Hake said. “There was literally no access to get to her; she lives alone. And for so many that are [stuck] in their homes, that is their story.”
Rodriguez said at least two other people in San Bernardino’s mountain communities had been found dead through official welfare checks since Feb. 23, when the historic snowstorms started. One was found dead in Big Bear and the other in Valley of Enchantment, a neighborhood in Crestline.
The agency, however, has also responded to nine more deaths since the storms, Rodriguez said — a total of 12.
“So far, we can only confirm [one], a traffic accident, as weather-related,” Rodriguez said. “The preliminary information in the other deaths does not indicate they are weather-related, but those investigations are ongoing.”
She declined to release further details about the other deaths, citing ongoing investigations.
But many mountain residents who spoke to The Times, some of whom found neighbors or friends dead inside their homes, said they had no doubt the massive storms and treacherous aftermath — the blocked roads, the lack of heat, cellphone service and food — probably contributed, if not caused, the casualties.
“I don’t think people know how dire it is right now,” Hake said. “We are literally trying to find people like my sister, people who are in their homes, and their life is hanging in the balance.”
At a Big Bear Lake City Council meeting Wednesday night, Laura Johnson told council members during public comments that a friend who lived in the area had died during the storms because their home could not be accessed by a dialysis provider.
“They would not allow the driver to come up and pick up my friend who needed dialysis three days out of the week,” Johnson said. “And he passed.”
Many worry that this is just the beginning as people continue to dig out.
“The level of loss and just the magnitude of the storm … I just cannot convey enough just how devastating” it has been, Hake said.
In Crestline’s Skyland community, Rhea-Frances Tetley said her 93-year-old neighbor, Elinor “Dolly” Avenatti, was found dead Monday.
Avenatti may have been elderly, Tetley said, but she was lively and a fixture in their community.
“She was a joy for the neighborhood,” Tetley said. “She was feisty and independent … and generous to a fault.”
Avenatti was active in senior citizens groups, baked for neighbors, walked daily before the storm and collected bottles and cans to make donations to animal rights groups, Tetley said.
She worried that a week without power, stuck in her cold house alone behind mounds of snow, might have been what killed Avenatti. Tetley said neighbors had been delivering food and checking in on the woman for about a week, but early this week — as electricity finally returned to their street — the nonagenarian didn’t answer her door. On Monday, neighbors went in and found her dead.
“She didn’t have heat,” Tetley said. “I think that she froze to death in the house.”
Tetley said that soon after Avenatti’s body was found, their street was finally plowed, because emergency officials needed to respond to the death.
For nearly two weeks, many living in mountain communities from Crestline to Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear have been trapped under massive amounts of snow — more than 100 inches in some places — while officials have struggled to clear roadways and provide relief after back-to-back storms pummeled the region with blizzard conditions and relentless snowfall. Residents were without power for days, roofs and decks collapsed, gas leaks spurred storm-related fires, and entire neighborhoods struggled to get supplies of food and gas.
As of Wednesday morning, about 95% of San Bernardino County roads had been cleared, officials said, but they noted that many of those roadways were still only wide enough to accommodate single-lane traffic. Almost 30 miles of roads still have not been plowed.
Hake and her family were without power in their Crestline home for at least five days, she said, eventually relocating to a friend’s house to wait for the power to be restored and roads to clear. She said that for days, there was no way to get to Big Bear to check on her sister, or even to her parents’ home in Lake Arrowhead.
“It feels like we are living in an alternate reality up here,” Hake said. As president of the Crestline Chamber of Commerce, she is helping coordinate supply drop-offs and facilitate wellness checks across the mountain community — even before her sister was found dead.
She said during one of those checks, a neighbor found an elderly man inside his home, where “for the last five days he had been rationing a frozen tamale.”
“Right now, we’re still focused on getting to people in need and getting everybody accounted [for],” Hake said.
Aaron Creighton, who lives in Crestline’s Cedarpines Park community, said an older neighbor who lived across from him was just reported dead in his home Wednesday morning. The man had been sick for a while, Creighton said, but he feared the stress of the storm accelerated his decline.
“There’s the stuff that does you harm right away and its obvious, and then there’s the stress that comes with this kind of stuff,” Creighton said, who is the owner and publisher of the community’s hyper-local newspaper, the Alpine Mountaineer. “It’s incredibly stressful to not be able to get out of the house.”
He said the neighbor, whom he declined to identify, did not live alone, but he wasn’t sure how often his housemates checked on the man and said no one in the house had dug out their driveway. The fire department spent at least 30 minutes digging through snow to access the man’s house to transport his body, Creighton said.
“It’s not the end of it,” Creighton said. “We have a lot of people that are completely and utterly cut off and stranded right now.”
Megan Vasquez, who started a food distribution center for Valley of Enchantment, said she’s heard of at least two people who died during the storms — and agreed with Creighton’s dismal prediction.
“I do feel like there is going to be a large body count when it’s all said and done,” Vasquez said. “There are many elderly people who are kind of reclusive in their homes with nothing, and there will be more people who have passed.”
Kristy Baltezore found one of her Crestline neighbors dead after she went to check on her. The woman, whom Baltezore didn’t want to identify, hadn’t been ill and wasn’t disabled.
“This is not good,” Baltezore said. “We still have half our community we haven’t made contact with.”
Rodriguez, the San Bernardino sheriff’s spokesperson, said the number of official welfare checks in recent days has decreased significantly. She said authorities are making house calls the same day a welfare check is requested.
“We continue to respond to calls for service for our mountain residents,” Rodriguez said in a statement.
If anyone needs help checking on a neighbor or loved one, officials said to call 911 or the county’s Storm Response Call Center at (909) 387-3911.
