Wounded Girl Dies After D.C. Rescue

Woman Sent Police To House Fire in SE

A young girl died yesterday after being found in a burning house in Congress Heights, where a woman wearing no clothes ran up to D.C. police officers and urged them to rescue the child.

The girl, who was thought to be 8 or 9, had what appeared to be stab wounds and was found in a room other than the one where a small fire had started, police said. Authorities have declared her death a homicide.

Police declined to release the name of the woman or the girl and would not disclose their relationship or say whether they lived in the house, in the 3300 block of 11th Place SE. The woman, who also had wounds, was hospitalized, authorities said.

About 5:30 a.m., officers sitting in a cruiser at 13th and Congress streets SE were startled when the naked woman approached them and told them that a house was burning with a child inside, police said.

Firefighters arrived at the two-story red brick house and found the girl on the second floor. She was alone, wounded and not breathing. They determined that her injuries were not caused by fire but that she had been stabbed, authorities said. A small fire in another room was quickly put out. The girl was taken to Children's National Medical Center, where she was declared dead shortly before 10 a.m.

D.C. police spokesman Kenny Bryson said the cause of death will be determined in an autopsy.

Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), said officials were looking into whether the girl had had any contact with the Child and Family Services Agency, the city's child welfare agency.

"So far nothing definitive has come up," Hobson said in an e-mail.

Yesterday afternoon, the house on 11th Place was cordoned off with yellow tape, its second-floor windows broken by firefighters. As word spread of the child's death, a few neighbors gathered and discussed the woman and the girl, who they said moved into the house last summer. One man wanted to place a stuffed animal at the house as a memorial, but police would not let him cross the yellow tape.

Neighbors said the woman was quiet and aloof. They said the girl seemed to be a typical playful child.

Queen Brown, who lives next door, said she occasionally saw the girl playing on a backyard swing set. Brown said she had not spoken to the woman.

Sandra Seegars, a Ward 8 advisory neighborhood commissioner and a neighbor, said she had seen the girl playing in the back yard and the woman mowing the lawn. The girl occasionally stopped by Seegars's house to pick up the mail when it was accidentally left there.

Seegars also said she had noticed that a man routinely stayed at the house and left early in the morning in a sport-utility vehicle.

Staff writers Mary Beth Sheridan and Nikita Stewart and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.