Arkansas Mobile Home Fire Kills Five Boys and Mother

As heroic neighbors tried desperately to help flames roared through a mobile home in Humphrey, Arkansas, killing five young boys and the mother of two of them.

Killed in the fire were 3-year-old Wesley Whiteside and 23-month-old Steven Whiteside, siblings of John & Rachel Whiteside; and Amanda Clemons, 23; her sons Dakota, 4, and Edison Ray, 3; and Aiden Joe Richter, 8 months.

Clemons’ mother, Julie Sanders who had just spoken with her daughter a few hours before the incident over the phone said Amanda was engaged, and hoped to move out of the trailer because it had electrical problems.

Roy Bronson, a former firefighter who lives four doors down, said he felt two explosions and reached the burning home before firefighters.

“I heard them screaming,” he said. “She talked to me, she said ‘Please help me.’ I said `Amanda, get down and crawl.’ She said, `I can’t. The fire has got me.”’

Rachel Whiteside told KTHV-TV of Little Rock that the flames broke out about 10 minutes after she had dropped her boys off.

Bronson said he had trouble sleeping afterward.

“I could hear those kids screaming,” he said. “I heard the kids crying through the door.”