New Year Brings Fresh Grief as Fire Kills 5 in NE

Tragedy Strikes Family 2 Years After Girl's Death

Oscar Wilson and Michelle Smith Wilson are known in the Brookland area of Washington as neighbors who believe in extended family. Everyone was welcome in their two-story frame house in the 1000 block of Jackson Street NE.

So plenty of people were there for the holidays yesterday when a fire raced through their house, making the early morning tragedy even more devastating. Five people were killed, including two children.

Killed were the couple's 10-year-old nephew, Michelle Wilson's father and three members of the "extended" family: Oscar Wilson's close friend's daughter, whom he helped raise, along with her boyfriend and their 4-year-old daughter. Oscar Wilson, 44, escaped, and Michelle Wilson, 41, had left the house about an hour before the fire broke out. The couple's 11-year-old son, Oscar Wilson III, was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. A family friend, a 15-year-old boy, was hospitalized but expected to survive.

Grief is no stranger to the Wilson family. On New Year's Eve, the night before the fire, the couple attended a candlelight vigil at a youth center on Benning Road for juvenile murder victims, including their daughter, Taleshia Ford. Ford gained national attention when the 17-year-old high school senior was killed in 2007 by a stray bullet at a Northwest Washington go-go club. The family had begun preparing for a second memorial for her Jan. 20, the second anniversary of her death.

After leaving Children's National Medical Center yesterday morning, an ambulance brought the Wilsons to a neighbor's home. Family members and neighbors gathered there to weep, hug and offer condolences. Oscar Wilson was still in his boxer shorts, the clothes he had on when smoke and fire forced him to flee the burning house about 7 a.m. The back of his hands were bruised from his attempt to run back into the home.

When he saw the family members and friends who came to greet him, Wilson could only utter one word: "Again."

His grief was overwhelming. "I can't keep going on like this," he said.

Wilson's wife sat next to him on the sofa covered with blankets. She rocked back and forth, in tears. "Oh God. . . . What did I do wrong? I tried to live a good life," she said.

The victims included the couple's nephew, Joseph Wilson, 10; and Michelle Wilson's father, Charles Smith, 72, whose bedroom was the enclosed back porch of the house. Also dead were Tawana Gant, 22, the daughter of one of Oscar Wilson's best friends, who had moved into Wilson's basement with her boyfriend, Keith Nelson, 23, and their 4-year-old daughter, Kaniya. Kaniya and Nelson also died in the blaze. They never made it out of the basement.

Officials have not determined the cause of the fire but said there might have been an electrical problem between the basement and the first floor. D.C. Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin said the design of the bungalow-style house, which is called a "balloon frame" (a common design for older homes in the city), has space inside the walls to allow for more effective circulation of heating and cooling. But it also conducts smoke and fire with deadly efficiency, he said.

Firefighters recovered two badly charred and melted smoke detectors from the house, but it was not clear whether they had functioned properly.

Rubin said firefighters responded less than a minute after the first call. But the fire's speed and intensity were overwhelming. The heat generated by the blaze could be seen by looking at the house next door, where the siding was melted and warped.