CHICAGO (WLS) — An exclusive interview with ABC7 was given by a Chicago family on Wednesday, following the tragic death of a 19-year-old woman with disabilities and the injury of a man due to a fire on the city’s Northwest Side.
According to the CFD, the fire ignited shortly before 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday in the second-floor unit of a residential building located in the 5200 block of North Bernard Street in North Park.
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The family of Sallina Sareth shared with ABC7 that she had been living with cerebral palsy. Unable to speak or walk, she was at home with her father and a nurse when the fire spread, ultimately trapping her in her room.”
“She can’t even say anything,” sister Rath Tep said. “How would we know? She must’ve suffered so much.”
There were gut-wrenching cries from her family as they walked through the burned remains of their apartment, and the bed where Sareth was found was left scorched.
“She’s like a daughter to me, because I’ve been watching her since I was young until now, and I’m not there when she needed me the most,” Tep said.
“The pain she must’ve felt,” brother Richard Sareth said. “And the thought that she was all alone in this situation.”
The 19-year-old woman was killed in the devastating fire Tuesday inside the family’s North Park apartment while she was home with her father and nurse. The flames somehow sparked in the front living room before quickly spreading.
“I said, ‘Please! I want inside to see my daughter. Please, let me in! Let me in!'” mother Samoeun Vuth said. “They said, ‘No!'”
The family said her father was able to get to her but needed help taking out her trachea tube. That’s when he tried to get the nurse’s help, who family members said was in another room before running out to safety.
“She was in a moment of panic, which made her leave our sister behind,” Richard Sareth said. “Because she wasn’t trained well, it cost the life of someone we loved.”
ABC7 has reached out to Aveanna Healthcare, the company the family said the nurse works for, but have not heard back.
The family is raising funds for her pending funeral through a GoFundMe page.
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