Tenants of Burned House Speak about Fire Victim

At 6:40 a.m., Angela Garcia was awakened by loud banging on her front door. A passerby was alerting her to a fire in her house.

“It was so cold, I could not see out the window,” said Garcia, 30, as she recalled the fire from her front porch. "When I opened the door, this man barges in and tells me, 'Your house is on fire!' So I gathered the kids and got out of the house.”

Upon fleeing her house with her children Garcia’s husband, Giovani Garcia, 30, noticed the fire was coming from the add-on room in the rear of the house.

The room served as the residence of the Garcia's tenant, an 82-year-old man. When he realized the elderly man could not open the door, Giovani Garcia jumped over the locked gate that lead to the add-on room, wielding an axe.  

“He went back there to try and save the man,” said his wife. “He couldn’t.”

Giovani Garcia was forced back from the fire due to the heavy smoke.

“I went over and hit the door over and over again,” he said.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department arrived on the scene with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department at about 6:45. Told about the elderly man, firefighters also had trouble accessing the fire and were forced to go through the Garcia's section of the house.

“They made a hole through the roof and went through to stop the fire,” said Angela Garcia. “Unfortunately, the man did not make it.”

Pedro Amaro, 71, Angela Garcia’s uncle and the owner of the house, said the elderly tenant had been living at the residence since 1981. The Garcia's had only positive words about the recently deceased man.

“He was a very nice man,” said Mrs. Garcia. “He would always say hi.”

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has not determined the cause of the fire. However, the preliminary investigation has indicated it was accidental in nature, and the investigation is ongoing.

The sheriff's department is withholding the victim's name pending positive identification by the coroner and notification of kin.