CHICAGO (AP) - The Latest on a Chicago apartment fire that left nine people dead (all times local):
10:15 p.m.
A weekend Chicago apartment fire that authorities say was started by fireworks or other smoking materials has claimed its ninth victim.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office says 14-year-old Cesar Contreras died Monday evening at a hospital. Another boy, also 14, remains hospitalized. Officials say that teen’s condition was too critical for investigators to interview him about what happened.
Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said Monday that investigators learned children had set off fireworks on the porch in the past and that people had smoked cigarettes there.
The fire that happened before dawn Sunday killed seven children and two adults.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the city’s Buildings Department says the apartment building’s owner is due in court next month after being cited for two electrical violations. Investigators have ruled out electrical problems as the cause of the blaze.
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4:50 p.m.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has identified three of the six children who were killed in a Chicago apartment fire that also killed two adults.
The office identified the three children in a news release Monday as 3-month-old Amaya Almaraz, 16-year-old Victor Mendoza and 10-year-old Giovanni Monarrez. It hasn’t identified any of the other people killed in the pre-dawn fire at a building on Chicago’s Southwest Side. Two other people, a man and a boy, survived but are in critical condition.
An Medical Examiner’s Office spokeswoman says autopsies have been conducted on all of those killed but the medical examiner is waiting for the fire department to determine how the blaze started before listing the cause and manner of death.
A fire department spokesman said Monday that investigators don’t believe the fire was set deliberately and that there were no working smoke alarms at the home.
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This update has been corrected to show that the name of the 3-month-old victim is Amaya Almaraz, not Almaraz Amaya.
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3 p.m.
A Chicago Fire Department official says investigators are searching the porch where a deadly apartment fire started to see if the blaze could have been caused by fireworks, cigarettes or other smoking materials.
Larry Langford said Monday that investigators learned that children had set off fireworks on the porch in the past and that people had smoked cigarettes there.
The pre-dawn Sunday fire killed six children and two adults and left one boy and one adult male in critical condition.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the city’s Buildings Department says the apartment building’s owner is due in court next month after being cited for two electrical violations. But Langford says investigators have ruled out electrical problems as the cause of Sunday’s blaze.
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2:25 p.m.
A Chicago Fire Department official says two people who were injured in an apartment fire that killed six children and two adults remain in “very” critical condition.
Larry Langford on Monday didn’t have any details about the two survivors of Sunday’s pre-dawn fire at an apartment on Chicago’s southwest side, other than one is 14-year-old boy and the other is in his 20s.
Langford says investigators don’t believe the fire was deliberately set, but they are still trying to determine its cause. He says investigators have ruled out electrical problems as the cause.
Some of the six children were at the apartment for a sleepover. Langford says there was no working smoke detector that would have alerted to the victims to the fire and that had there been even one, the victims could have easily escaped out the front of the building.
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9:50 a.m.
A Chicago Fire Department official says some of the children who were among eight people killed in a weekend apartment fire were there for a sleepover.
Larry Langford said Monday that it remains unclear which of the six children and two adults lived at the apartment in the city’s southwest side where the fire broke out before dawn on Sunday.
Langford says the cause of the fire remains under investigation but there’s no indication that it was deliberately set.
He says there was no working smoke detector that would have alerted the victims to the fire that started in a back porch of a rear building. He says had there been one, the victims could have easily escaped.
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