Thursday, 4:30 PM
One dead, firefighters hurt after Brookline fire near BU
(George Rizer/Globe Staff)
Two young people hugged outside a fatal fire in Brookline this morning in an off-campus apartment house near Boston University.
By John R. Ellement, George Rizer, and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff
State Fire Marshal Stephen D. Coan said this afternoon that embers from a smoldering charcoal grill was the likely cause of an early morning fire at an off-campus apartment near Boston University that killed a college student visiting from Pennsylvania.
Five college students had spent the night partying and barbecuing in the apartment on St. Marys Street in Brookline, which is just a few blocks from the site of a February fire that killed two BU juniors. At about 12:30 a.m., the students again fired up the barbecue on a rear wooden deck cluttered with a couch and an overstuffed chair, according to Coan and Brookline Fire Chief John Green. The students went to bed several hours later and awoke to the sound of smoke alarms at about 6 a.m., Coan said.
Four of the men ran out of the apartment and met on the first-floor landing. They noticed one missing. Because of heavy smoke and fire "They were unable to re-enter the unit to find him," Coan said.
Brookline police Captain John O'Leary said that the victim was a 19-year-old from a small town in Pennsylvania visiting a BU student who lived in the third-floor apartment. Police did not release his name because his family had not yet been notified about his death. He had arrived in Boston at about 6 p.m. Thursday with another friend, who survived the fire, O'Leary said.
They found his body inside a bedroom closet on the third floor.
"It appears he got confused," Green said this morning standing outside the charred, yellow-brick row house. "He went into the closet to get out and was likely overcome by smoke."
"There was some partying going on," Green continued. "He was part of the party."
The building is home to at least 12 BU students. "Our heart goes out to the family of this young man," said Colin Riley, a school spokesman. "It's just an awful thing. It's something we just dealt with."
"Even though he is not a BU student, it does affect the university community," Riley said.
This week is spring break at BU so most students are out of town, Riley said. The blaze displaced roughly a dozen students, and the school is working to find temporary housing for those affected. The blaze was in the three-story building on St. Marys Street, just over the Boston city near Commonwealth Avenue and BU's campus.
Several officials from BU were on the scene this morning. Shortly after the fire, an MBTA bus took at least 20 residents away from the scene.
Firefighters from Boston and Newton assisted the Brookline Fire Department battling the flames. Two firefighters suffered non-life-threatening injuries battling the blaze. Brookline firefighter Kevin Mahoney fell through the floor of a deck and dropped three stories. He was rushed to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is expected to recover. A Boston firefighter also hurt his back.
When Brookline firefighters arrived, they found heavy smoke and flames on the third floor. It appears that the fire may have started there on the top level, near the back of the building on the wooden porch where the students lit the barbecue. It is against town code to have a grill anywhere but on the ground floor of a residence, Green said.
Firefighters used ladders to rescue residents from the flames, escorting them from the upper floors to the ground. They did not find the victim in the closet the first time they checked the third floor, which was filled with thick smoke, Green said. When they searched the third floor a second time, the young man's body was discovered in the closet, Green said.
In February, a candle ignited a blaze that ripped through an off-campus housing complex at 21 Aberdeen Street and killed two BU juniors -- Rhiannon McCuish, 21, of Mashpee, and Stephen Adelipour 21, of Great Neck, N.Y. A third student, Steven Boursiquot, 22, a senior from Dix Hills, N.Y., suffered burns on 20 percent of his body.
