Fighting couple dead in city fire

Kenida James heard loud kicking at the front door and a desperate voice calling through the mail slot: "My mom's in there! My mom's in there!"

She opened the door to find two young girls, with a 1-year-old boy in tow, who had just fled a horror scene: a burning house where two adults would be found dead. The girls were a niece and a daughter of the woman.

Outside, James said, she found a fourth child, a badly injured and bleeding 11-year-old girl on the North Philadelphia sidewalk.

Late yesterday, investigators still were trying to piece together precisely what had happened, and had not yet released the identity of the victims.

They did know that shortly after 10 a.m., police responded to a domestic dispute in the 2300 block of North 13th Street at one of four attached low-rise public-housing units.

Inside, they found the bodies of a 30-year-old man and a 31-year-old woman.

It appeared that the man had stabbed his girlfriend, and then stabbed her 11-year-old daughter as she tried to intervene, Fire Capt. James Clark said. The girl was in critical condition at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, Clark said.

The man then spread gasoline about the premises, set a fire, and in the process set himself ablaze, Clark said.

He speculated that the man initially had planned to "cover his tracks" and said it was unclear whether he had taken his own life intentionally.

Three children - including the 1-year-old, believed to be the victims' son - escaped. The boy was rescued by the slain woman's niece and daughter, who were also in the home, said James, who had been visiting her sister, Kimberly Sexton, in an adjoining unit.

Stunned neighbors along the tidy street of two-story, four-unit buildings owned by the Philadelphia Housing Authority said they had not detected signs of trouble at the fire-damaged unit.

"She was a good mother," Sexton said. "She was very nice." Dwayne Robinson, a neighbor on the other side, had no inkling of problems during the five years she had lived there, he said.

Asked if any other instances of domestic violence had been reported at the home, Clark said, "Not that I know of."

He said the man had visited the home occasionally. Yesterday, the silver Hyundai with a New Jersey license plate that he had driven was parked in front of the unit, cordoned off by police tape.

The 11-year-old was stabbed as she tried to go to her mother's aid, Clark said. It was unclear how she had gotten out of the house.

"She fought for her mother," James said. "She was lying there, going in and out of consciousness" and bleeding profusely from her side, she added.

Sexton provided a blanket to cover her, and James said that she had tried to get help from passing motorists but that "no one would stop." Eventually, the 11-year-old was transported to the hospital.

"I cried so hard," James said. "I don't know what I'm going to do tonight."