Family ‘risked it all’ to save kids killed in fire
Tragedy shakes historic community, which lacks hydrants
TAMINA — Working through flames and breaking windows to save his daughter’s children, Pastor Bobby Johnson Jr. and his son could rescue only one.
Ten-year-old Adrian Mitchell was pulled from an early morning blaze Friday at the family homestead in this historic community, but his two brothers and sister were trapped behind a wall of fire.
Johnson and his son, Jarvis Johnson, were critically injured trying to reach the children on the second floor of their home.
“They risked it all,” said Montgomery County Fire Marshal Jimmy Williams.
This was the second time in less than two years the Johnson family had lost a child. Jarvis Johnson’s 3-year-old daughter
Jasmine, who had health problems, died in 2015.
The deaths and injuries of three generations of a founding Tamina family shook the community, which was settled more than a century ago by formerly enslaved people shortly after the Civil War.
The community’s lack of fire hydrants may have hampered firefighting efforts, local leaders said.
“If we would’ve had more access to water, this maybe could’ve been avoided,” said Shirley Grimes, who runs a day care the grandchildren had attended.
Siblings Terrance “TJ” Mitchell, 13; Kaila Mitchell, 6; and Kyle Mitchell, 5, perished in the blaze their brother survived.
The children’s mother, 36-year-old April Johnson Mitchell, was reportedly unharmed. Their father was working out of state, officials said.
Four family members were hospitalized: Bobby Johnson, 59, pastor of the Thergood Memorial Church of God in Christ in Willis; his wife, Carrie, 56; Jarvis Johnson, 34, a church deacon; and the 10-year-old boy.
Mourning the losses
As dusk fell Friday night, several were recovering from surgeries.
The men suffered from smoke inhalation and sustained burns on their faces and upper torsos, typically life-threatening injuries, Williams said.
Carrie Johnson was taken to a hospital in The Woodlands with less-serious injuries, officials said.
Three police officers were injured, including two with the Shenandoah Police Department and one with the Oak Ridge Police Department, said Scott Spencer, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
The Johnsons are descendants of original Tamina settlers and live on a road named for their ancestors.
About three dozen family members gathered at a nearby home Friday after the fire, mourning the young lives lost and praying for recovery for those who survived.
Relative Althea Taylor described feeling numb.
“The kids were loved by their parents,” she said. Others expressed shock. “My heart immediately sunk for the family,” said neighbor Traniqa White. “I’ve known these kids since they were born. And my heart just aches for the mom.”
The blaze started about 4 a.m. in the two-story house at the back of the Johnson property and quickly spread to a one-story family home at the front. Both homes were engulfed by the time firefighters arrived and the two-story home’s upper floor had collapsed, Williams said.
The police officers who were injured tried to climb the stairs to reach the children but are expected to recover. Firefighters joined the rescue effort, but “there was just too much smoke, heat and flames on the second floor,” the fire marshal said.
The children’s bodies were found amid the charred rubble about 7 a.m., said Justice of the Peace Edie Connelly, who serves as coroner. She arrived at the scene Friday shortly after the flames were extinguished.
She said law enforcement on the scene included Montgomery County Sheriff ’s Office detectives, Montgomery County Fire Marshal’s office arson investigators and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The homes are not believed to have had smoke detectors, officials said. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
A happy family
Grimes, who has operated a child care center near the Johnson property for two decades, described a church-centered family with happy children.
“It’s just a big loss,” she said. “They had some smiles that you just couldn’t wait for.”
She recalled their stories on Monday mornings about what had happened at their grandfather’s church the Sunday before.
She said the children adored their grandfather and called him “Papi.” Grimes’ grandson was close to the youngest boy, Kyle, because they went to prekindergarden together.
“They were crazy about each other,” she said.
Family patriarch Bobby Johnson is known as an energetic revivalist. Carrie Johnson serves as a missionary in the Church of God in Christ — a Pentecostal denomination founded in Memphis in the late 1890s.
The COGIC has about 20 jurisdictions in Texas, and Bobby Johnson is president of the southeast third jurisdiction’s evangelism team.
Pastor Prince Bryant II, who leads the Toliver Memorial COGIC in Willis — about a 5-minute drive from Thergood Memorial — said Bobby Johnson has been a pastor for decades but also works as a contractor.
He described Bobby Johnson as a “high-energy” preacher.
“Very passionate. Very effective,” Bryant said. “He runs a lot of revivals. That’s how he got the slot as president of the evangelism department. He is probably doing 40 to 50 revivals a year.”
Prayer vigils have been held over the surviving Johnson family members at two Houston-area hospitals.
Bryant said late Friday that pastors and ministry leaders are working to assist the family by arranging funerals as well as a benefit services and a community prayer event.
Ongoing water issues
As the tragedy unfolded Friday, the community’s lack of fire hydrants forced firefighters to find water elsewhere.
Neighbors and other witnesses reported tank trucks running out of water, but the fire marshal said there was no interruption in water flowing or difficulty accessing the houses.
Firefighters tapped into a water line about a mile away at Interstate 45 in Shenandoah and trucked water to the site.
A failed deal with Shenandoah would have brought a water main within a dozen yards of the Johnson property, according to James Leveston Sr., president of the Old Tamina Water Supply Corp.
“We would have had a hydrant right there,” he said. “It would have been right by that house.”
Leveston, the 74-year-old descendant of original settlers, said homes in the community relied on barrels and wells until the water corporation was founded in the early 1970s.
The community now buys water from the Chateau Woods Municipal Utility District, which is captured in tanks in Tamina. That water is pumped through 4-inch lines to about 200 residences.
Efforts over the last few decades to arrange direct water services with the nearby towns of Shenandoah and Oak Ridge, and the South Montgomery County Municipal Utility District, have been unsuccessful — resulting in failed contract negotiations, settlements and court proceedings, Leveston said.
He said he’s not placing blame but can’t help but wonder if a source for pumping water directly to the Johnson residences could have saved lives and property.
The challenges of providing utilities to so-called “Freedmen’s Towns” — which trace their histories to formerly enslaved settlers shortly after Emancipation in the 1860s — continue to plague historically black towns across the South.
Tanya Debose, executive director of the Independence Heights Redevelopment Council in Houston and a board member of the Historic Black Towns and Settlements Alliance, said water line improvements in Tamina may have spared the children.
“These babies’ lives should not be in vain,” said Debose, who is a cousin of the Tamina Johnsons through her paternal grandmother. “If they would have had their own connection and the water would have been more accessible, it might have prevented the deaths of these children and the fire that destroyed these homes.”
Debose said she is calling on members of Congress to help broker a solution to Tamina’s utility problems.
“Now we have to get to the real issue,” she said, “How do we connect them to water and sewer?”