Burglar: I’m the cleaner
A MUM and dad perished in a horrific blaze at their home yesterday, leaving their four children orphaned.
A neighbour helped save the youngsters, aged between 10 and 17, catching them as they leapt from an upstairs window .
A fifth survivor, an adult male family friend, was dragged from the stairway and given the kiss of life on the pavement, but was last night “seriously ill” in hospital. The children, three girls and a boy, were also in hospital. The bodies of their parents were later recovered from the detached home in Ladybarn, Manchester.
Neighbours had called 999 after being woken by screams at around 2.30am.
One, who did not wish to be named, said: “We went outside and saw the fire, we heard screaming from the window at the back of the house and could see a girl. One of the girls, a 17-year-old, jumped from the window and landed near the garage.
“She had really bad injuries. My neighbour Robert picked her up and she told him her siblings were inside. He told the kids to jump and said, ‘I’ll catch you’.
“The kids jumped and he broke their fall. Fire crews were told there were three more people inside and they went in. They found one man on the staircase and dragged him out. He was given CPR.”
A probe has begun into the cause of the fire, which started in a downstairs living room. Neighbours said the family had moved to the UK from Palestine and had lived in the house for about two years.
Neighbour Athra Mania said: “They are very friendly, and a very nice family.” A BURGLAR caught trying to get into the home of a 102-year-old woman on Christmas Eve said: “It’s OK, I’m the window cleaner.”
Gavin James, 33, broke the window of the frail OAP’s Middlesbrough home with a brick but was confronted by a neighbour, Teesside crown court heard.
Jailing James for three years, Judge Howard Crowson rejected his apology letter saying he should show more remorse.
He said: “You targeted the home because it was that of someone with infirmity.”