EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill (KMOX) - An East St. Louis woman has been charged for the deaths of her five children in an apartment fire in August.
All five of Sabrian Dunigan's children were killed in the fire that started on the second floor of the apartment at 560 North 29th Street: Deonta Davis Jr., 9; Neveah Dunigan and Heaven Dunigan, 8-year-old twins; Jabari Johnson, 4; and Roy-el Dunigan, 2.
Four of the children were pronounced dead at the scene and the fifth died at the hospital.
Dunigan, 34, faces five counts of endangering the life/health of a child, a felony charge. The Illinois state fire marshal’s office has been investigating the fire to determine if the children were left at home alone.
Fire officials initially indicated that no adults had been in the apartment when the fire started, saying that the children’s mother had left to run an errand and returned home to find the fire. The children’s grandfather, Greg Dunigan, told that St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he and his wife jumped from the apartment’s second floor while Sabrina Dunigan was away picking up her boyfriend.
A number of other family members also lived in the apartment, after they had been displaced by a fire at their previous home five months earlier, police said.
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