Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Boy, 4, fights for life after caravan fire kills brother, 3
Dad’s desperate bid to save his sons
A DISTRAUGHT dad ran to a neighbour for help with his badly burned four-year-old son in his arms after fire engulfed their caravan, killing his youngest boy.
Shaun Harvey, 28, bravely rescued eldest son Harley as the caravan “went up like a tinderbox”, but he could not reach threeyear-old son Zac.
Harley is critically ill in hospital, while Shaun, who is separated from the boys’ mother Erin Harvey, was stable last night.
The fire broke out at around 5.30am on Sunday in the caravan parked next to Shaun’s stepmother’s house in Ffair Rhos, Ceredigion, mid Wales.
He had been living their while looking for a permanent home.
Neighbour Miriam Connolly said she woke to the sound of Shaun banging on her door begging for help. Miriam, 54, said: “When I opened the door I saw Shaun was carrying his eldest boy in his arms, the poor tot had no eyebrows left. He was terribly burnt.
“His father was in his underpants and the skin had been burned off his neck, shoulders and back. He had tried so hard to get back into the caravan to reach his other little boy, but it was an inferno. It went up in a matter of seconds.” Miriam’s husband Sean, 55, said: “Shaun was screaming, ‘My boy’s dead. My boy’s dead. I’ve killed my boy’. I was telling him that no one had killed anybody, but he was in such a state. “The caravan went up like a tinderbox, we tried to reassure him he did everything he could to save his child.
“We ran a cold bath for him and his boy, they were in extreme pain. Sean is a lovely guy. He loves those boys so much. They were running an extension cable from the house into the caravan and that’s what the police and fire service are looking at.”
The boys’ mum Erin, 28, rang Miriam, pleading, “where’s my baby?” after learning about the fire. Det Chief Supt Steve Cockwell described the blaze as a “tragic incident”.