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Uncle dies in attempt to save Brandon teen
The mentally disabled youth perishes as his mother screams outside. Her brother rushes into an inferno.
By EDDY RAMIREZ
Published March 17, 2005
BRANDON - Toni Loredo and her brother were chatting in the parking lot Wednesday when they noticed black smoke pouring out of her apartment.
"Get my baby out! Get my baby out!" screamed Loredo, whose 17-year-old son, Patrick, was inside.
The brother, Dean Harold, bolted for the door. But when he opened it more flames shot out, spreading to other apartment units in the building.
"It was like an inferno, like something straight out of a horror movie," said neighbor Bea Tiemann. "But her brother charged right in."
Harold, 37, tried in vain to save his nephew, but the boy died in the burning first-floor apartment, according to the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office.
Two neighbors pulled Harold from the bedroom window, but he died after being airlifted to Tampa General Hospital, sheriff's officials said.
The fire broke out about 2 p.m. in Hamilton Pointe Apartment Homes on Golden Raintree Place in Brandon, where Patrick Loredo, a mentally disabled teen, lived with his mother and uncle.
Ray Yeakley, a Hillsborough Fire Department spokesman, said the blaze spread vertically first, destroying Loredo's first-floor apartment and the one above it.
Then as Harold opened the door to their apartment, the flames fanned out to the two other units on the first floor of the eight-unit building.
Lanorris W. Singletary, 27, said he heard a woman's screams and rushed downstairs to see his apartment building engulfed in flames.
He and another man, Justin Burns, saw Harold trapped inside the apartment with his legs sticking out from the bedroom window. With flames spitting out from the window, the two men broke the window and a bed board to get to Harold.
"He was stuck between the window frame and the bed board," said Burns, 23, who lives nearby. "I grabbed one leg and the other guy grabbed the other and we started pulling and tugging."
The two men placed his body on a window screen and dragged Harold to safety. Then Hillsborough fire rescue officials arrived and airlifted him to Tampa General Hospital. His body was covered with burns, they said.
Wednesday evening, Toni Loredo, 43, sat outside the charred remains of her apartment building in her purple slippers with her head between her knees.
She sobbed and gently cradled herself as a heavy rain started to pour.
"She's hurt, she's mad, she's angry," said Tiemann, the neighbor. "There's no pain worse than losing someone you love."
By late afternoon Wednesday, fire officials were still trying to determine the cause of the fire.
American Red Cross spokesman Tim Teahan said 17 people were displaced by the fire that damaged four units. He said the Red Cross will provide them with shelter, food and clothing.
Those who knew Patrick described him as a pleasant young man who would greet neighborhood people each day before he walked to the bus he took to Willis Peters, a Dover school for disabled children.
"He would always come by my house, asking, "Ms. Bea, Ms. Bea, are you going to make me some cookies today?' " said Tiemann, 73. "He was a jewel."
Eddy Ramirez can be reached at eramirez@sptimes.com or 661-2441.
[Last modified March 17, 2005, 01:18:43]
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