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PITTSTON — Three juveniles were taken into custody Tuesday night hours after an 11-year-old boy died from injuries sustained in a fire at a home on Wood Street.
Luzerne County Coroner Dan Hughes confirmed the fatality, but held off identifying the boy until the family was contacted.
Pittston police reported three juveniles were arrested as a result of an investigation. Due to rules of juvenile court procedure, their names were not released by police.
Other family members safely fled the blaze, though police did not identify other residents of the home.
Police said the county District Attorney’s Office and Pennsylvania State Police assisted in the investigation.
Neighbor Bill Price permitted investigators to view the video from his Ring door camera that showed a fireball lighting up the night at 18 Wood St. at 12:49 a.m.
“I couldn’t believe how fast, how fast (the house went up in flames),” Price said.
Firefighters were dispatched at 12:51 a.m., police said in a news release. They brought the fire under control and removed the boy from the house. He was rushed by ambulance to Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center in Plains Township where Hughes pronounced him dead, police said.
The fire tore through the two-story wood house and investigators, including state police fire marshal Karri Dodson, focused on the porch under the bedroom of the boy, the area where a flash was caught by Price’s video camera. Charred debris littered the front yard and the leaves of a bush were scorched by the inferno.
“There were five of them in there, I believe,” Price said.
County property records listed the owner of the house as Bobbie Jo Karpinski.
“The daughter came up here,” Price said. “Her and her boyfriend, they jumped out a second-floor window and they came over here. They had their two little dogs and they were sitting on the porch.”
Price said he did not know how the others got out. But he said he saw firefighters carry out the boy.
“And they hurried, God bless them, them poor guys. They hurried down that ladder with that little boy and they ran him to the ambulance,” Price said.
Price, 60, who’s retired, recalled lending the boy a pair of welding goggles to look at a solar eclipse. “I went over there, he was thrilled to death to see that,” Price said.
Another neighbor who did not want to be identified said he spoke to the family. He said they told him they were asleep when the fire started. One of the people living in the house tried to get to the boy’s bedroom with a ladder and fire extinguisher, the neighbor said.
The ladder rested against a block wall and the fire extinguisher stood on the concrete sidewalk in front of the house.
