Woman dies trying to save dogs from fire
One man was injured and more than a dozen dogs and his wife, who tried to save the animals, were killed in a fire Monday night in Holliston, authorities said.
The fire broke out around 11:30 p.m. in a single-family home at 623 Winter St.
“I saw police come out, running. I thought they were chasing someone,” said Alex Cong, the couple’s next-door neighbor. “But from the bathroom I could see flames. They were huge. The back of the house was totally engulfed. The smoke went up to the sky. It was like somebody had dropped a bomb on the house.”
The couple managed to escape safely, but the woman ran back to try to save their more than 12 dogs, said Jennifer Mieth, a spokeswoman for the state Fire Marshal’s Office.
The dogs and the woman, whose name authorities would not confirm Tuesday pending positive identification by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, all died, Mieth said. The victim’s husband was taken to a local hospital after the fire, the cause of which is still under investigation, she said.
“They had no kids. Her life was her dogs,” said Kevin Swanecamp, a neighbor of the elderly couple for 32 years.
Swanecamp said he was watching TV when his own dog began “going bonkers.”
“I look over, and there’s smoke and flames popping,” he said. “It looked like it started in the back left-hand corner of the house.”
Swanecamp said he ran across the street to the house and the man was out, but his wife had run back inside to try to save the dogs.
“That was her,” he said. “They tried reviving her in the driveway. It was horrible.”
Her husband is in his late 80s, Swanecamp said, and she was in her mid-70s.
“He’s struggling,” he said. “They were partners for life.”
They ran a courier service out of their house, Swanecamp said. She recently had gotten a part-time job at Home Depot, he said, but her passion was her dogs — some rescues and others show dogs.