Mother and child dead, father critical, following Lutz house fire

Dagny Perry stands with her niece Savannah Benitez (behind Perry) in front of the home that burned at Sunrise Mobile Home Park. "He didn't deserve this," she said of the little boy that died. [Kathleen Flynn | Times]

LUTZ -- Around midnight, Megan Salzer heard popping sounds from the mobile home next door.

Then she saw flames coming from a window air conditioner in the kitchen and heard her neighbor Crystal Holly Dooley , 37, screaming.

"I told her to get out," Salzer said. "She said 'I'm trying.'"

But neither Dooley nor her husband Mariano William Pita, 44, nor her rambunctious 4-year-old son, Gabriel William Pita, escaped their fiery trailer on their own.

Firefighters carried them out unconscious.

The boy died early this morning. Sheriff's officials said the surviving couple remained in "extremely critical condition" at area hospitals Wednesday afternoon.

But late Wednesday night, a Tampa General Hospital supervisor, Carl Pluhm, said that Dooley died, too.

Firefighters were called to the burning residence at the Sunrise Mobile Home Park, 18118 U.S. 41 N, just after midnight. After dousing the flames with water, crews crews their way through a locked door where they found all three not breathing.

Many neighbors at the mobile home park knew the family because of their boy, characterizing the child as an energetic, aggressive escape artist who like to run through the neighborhood.

Several said he had previously broken several of the trailer's windows in efforts to flee the residence.

The boy's behavior had forced his parents to install multiple locks on the two doors of their mobile home, neighbors said. Many speculated Wednesday morning that the locks may have stymied the family's efforts to escape their burning trailer.

The cause of the fire has not been determined.

In the fire's aftermath, the door to the gutted kitchen was gone. The unhinged side of a rear door - the one containing the locks - had been torn away by fire officials.

 

 

-- Bill Coats, Times staff writer
Casey Cora contributed to this report