With no smoke detectors in the North Hill rental house, a deadly fire spread quietly.
Neighbors said their security cameras showed smoke beginning to seep from the East Tallmadge Avenue home’s second story and attic at 12:29 a.m. Saturday.
But neither Omar Riley, Shirley Wallis, nor three girls — Shaniya Wallis, 12, Aniyla Riley, 9, and Shanice Riley, 8 — in the home apparently noticed. Neither did family friend Jennifer Grubbs, who was in an attic bedroom.
By 1:30 a.m., flames had chewed through the west side of the home, so fierce and hot they cracked the glass windows and melted the mini blinds hanging inside the house next door. Neighbors called 911 as they watched Grubbs crawl from an attic window on the front of the house.
She escaped the fire by dropping about 8 feet onto the top of a porch roof. A man who lives across the street grabbed her legs and pulled her to safety, witnesses said. No one else emerged from the flames.
When firefighters arrived at 1:38 a.m., they rushed into the house and found Omar Riley on the first floor, Shirley Wallis on a second-floor staircase landing and all three girls on the second floor. None were responsive.
Only the oldest girl, Shaniya Wallis, was revived and it was unclear Saturday whether she would survive.
The family’s pastor, the Rev. Zach Prosser of Celebration Church in Akron, prayed at Shaniya Wallis’ bedside, asking for healing and peace as school and fire department officials scrambled to find her family members.
“I’m a firm believer that God can bring her through this,” Prosser said Saturday afternoon. “She’s been miraculously spared.”
Cause unknown
What caused the blaze isn’t yet clear.
Firefighters said someone had been cooking food on a stove top and they found no smoke detectors in the house, but their investigation continues.
The deadly fire comes just two days after Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan swore in Clarence Tucker as Akron’s new fire chief. The ceremony was at Akron Fire Station No. 7 on East Tallmadge Avenue, which is about two blocks away from Saturday’s blaze.
Tucker, who managed the city’s Fire Prevention Bureau before being named chief, has said he wants to make sure every home in the city has smoke detectors.
The fire department has worked with the American Red Cross for several years to provide smoke detectors to people who cannot afford them, fire department spokesman Mike Brooks said. The Red Cross handles the paperwork, he said, and firefighters install the detectors in about six to 10 houses per week.
On Saturday, neighbors said they were surprised that the home at 266 E. Tallmadge Avenue didn’t have smoke detectors because the family had lived there about eight years.
Neighbors described the children as polite and friendly. Lisa Sine, who lives across the street, said Shirley Wallis dropped the kids off at school in the morning and Omar Riley picked them up in the afternoon.
On Saturday, Sine left two teddy bears on top of a shrub in front of the burned shell of the home.
She said Omar Riley would stop in her front yard — which features more than a dozen illuminated Santas, snowmen and a manger scene — and they each smoked a cigarette on his way to get the girls.
“He told me the girls love my decorations lit up,” Sine said Saturday. “So I went inside and turned them on so they could see them.”
Aniyla Riley attended Forest Hill elementary; her younger sister Shanice Riley went to Seiberling elementary; and 12-year-old Shaniya Wallis, who survived the blaze, goes to Hyre middle school.
David James, Akron schools superintendent, sent an email Saturday to the district’s 3,500 employees, notifying them of what happened and sending “condolences and prayers to the many wonderful members of our educational staff at Seiberling, Forest Hill and Hyre who nurtured, loved and educated these wonderful girls.”
Each school affected will bring in counselors Monday for students and staff, officials said.
Aniyla and Shanice Riley were also part of the LeBron James Family Foundation’s Wheels for Education program, which aims to help Akron Public Schools students graduate from high school before ultimately moving on to college.
Just after 1 p.m., Cavaliers star LeBron James tweeted to his 33.7 million followers: “Unbelievably saddened to hear the news. My heart hurts … Our family lost two bright, bright stars.”
Fiancee escapes
Glen Parker walked up the slope of Linda Ridgeway’s yard early Saturday morning and fell into her arms as if they were family.
Yet she might not have recognized him if he hadn’t said he lived in the house that burned next door, too. He was out when the fire happened. His fiancee, Jennifer Grubbs, had crawled out of the attic window.
A sticker identifying him as a visitor to Summa Akron City Hospital’s emergency room — where Grubbs was taken — was still stuck to his chest.
Parker said Grubbs’ face was burned and she was banged up, but he said she was all right and would be released from the hospital later Saturday.
Everyone in the house had been asleep, Parker said, when the fire started.
Ridgeway said she, too, had been dozing in her family room next door. Screams and a popping noise awoke her.
At first she thought the noises were coming from the TV and she hit the mute button on the remote control. But the noise continued and she turned and saw flames.
As Ridgeway ran through her dining room, the glass in the windows broke and she could feel a wave of heat hit her before she made it outside with her phone to call 911.
On Saturday afternoon, as she showed visitors how the fire had peeled off the vinyl siding on her home, Ridgeway said this wasn’t the first time that 266 E. Tallmadge Ave. had burned.
The same house burned shortly after she and her husband moved next door about 20 years ago.
A few minutes after she shared the story Saturday, about 10 members of a family ducked under the yellow tape surrounding the charred house.
Sandra Mathis, 65, said she and her former husband and their six children had lived at 266 E. Tallmadge Ave. when the house burned the first time — Dec. 14, 1996.
The only one home at the time was her 17-year-old son, she said. He was sick and asleep in his attic bedroom about 2 p.m.
A slow burning electrical fire in the basement had spread, Mathis said.
A smoke detector alarm woke the teen, she said. He tried to get out of an upstairs balcony, like the family planned in case of fire, but he couldn’t get out. The teen ended up moving a dresser from in front of a window and climbing out onto the porch roof to escape.
Firefighters, Mathis said, found a soot outline of his body in his bed where he had been sleeping.
“That smoke detector saved his life,” Mathis said. “I wish they would have had smoke detectors last night, too.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.