Three recover from carbon-monoxide poisoning

SAINT JOHN, N.B. — A woman says her public-housing unit in New Brunswick no longer feels like home after her daughter, sister and their caretaker were released from hospital having suffered carbon monoxide poisoning.

Jessica Sypher said the two girls and a family friend were sent to hospital in critical condition after a carbon-monoxide leak at her home in Saint John, N.B. on Friday night.

Sypher, 21, said she and her mother had left her four-year-old daughter and 11-year-old sister with friend Kenneth Naves, whom the children call “papa.”

Sypher said they returned home, and having left her key inside, she knocked on the door for Naves to let her in.

When there was no answer, she said she knocked again, louder, and peered through the window to see the 53-yearold man stumbling in the stairway.

“He was kind of shaken, and he said: ‘I don’t know what to do,’ ” Sypher said in an interview on Monday. “I thought he was going to faint, so I told him to sit down … and it almost looked like he was choking to death.”

Panicked, Sypher said she called 911 as she and her mother tried to kick down the doors.

Having heard them screaming, her neighbour came down to deliver the decisive blows, she said, and they burst into their home to find both girls unconscious.

She said she grabbed her daughter off the couch and ran out of the house, while emergency workers arrived on scene to rescue Naves and her sister.

About 30 residents were escorted from the complex, said a platoon chief with the Saint John fire department. Authorities were so concerned about the carbon-monoxide levels that two of Sypher’s neighbours were sent to a local hospital for evaluation, but were later released.

Sypher said her loved ones were rushed to a Saint John hospital in critical condition and later airlifted to a Halifax hospital, where they were treated in hyperbaric chambers to replenish their oxygen levels.

They were released from hospital on Sunday and returned to Saint John, and while Sypher is grateful that everyone seems to be fine, she said she can’t seem to shake the lingering feeling of danger inside her home.