Couple, 6-month-old baby perish in N. Phila. fire

Smoke engulfed a two-story North Philadelphia rowhouse early yesterday morning in a fire that extinguished the lives of a young couple and their six-month-old baby girl. They had just moved into the rented house on Valentine's Day.

"That was their Valentine's Day gift" to each other, said Tyenisha Leach, 25, a cousin of the young woman who died, as she and other relatives drove onto Seltzer Street near 27th, where hours earlier firefighters desperately tried to save the young family.

Family members identified the victims as Nyasha Vicks, 25, her fiance, Curtis Singleton, 26, and their baby, Payhje Singleton.

Shortly after the fire broke out about 3:15 a.m., neighbor Tawana Hughes, 46, heard glass breaking, as firefighters tried to get inside the house. Rescuers carried Vicks' and Singleton's charred bodies out on stretchers. "The man, he was still burning," said Hughes.

A fireman cradled the baby in his arms, she said. Hughes said that smoke billowed down half the block. "Wasn't no flames, just smoke," she said.

Hughes said that she'd just met Vicks on Saturday, when her new neighbor introduced herself and told her that she was selling fish dinners. Vicks loved to cook and was selling fish platters to make money, said her cousin, Zakiyyah Gillison, 32. And she loved doing people's hair.

Tall and skinny, "she should have been America's Next Top Model," Gillison said.

Fire commissioner Lloyd Ayers said that the flames appeared to have started in the kitchen, the Associated Press reported.

Thomas Honeyford, a supervisor in the Fire Department's dispatch center, said that the fire was under control in about 20 minutes. Engine 45 - the closest, at 26th and York streets - was the quickest to respond, he said. Honeyford said that one smoke detector in the house reportedly had a dead battery, and another had no battery.

The cause of the fire was still being investigated, he said.

Around the corner, at 27th and Somerset streets, Andre Singleton, Singleton's uncle, wailed, tears flowing from his eyes. He gave a bear hug to anyone who approached him.

He was too distraught to speak, but his girlfriend, Elizabeth Bates, 27, said that the family was devastated. She said that "everybody around here loved" Curtis, whom people nicknamed "Scrap."

Starr Pierce, 27, holding an eight-month-old girl, said that her baby was another of Curtis Singleton's children. "Besides the fact he was a good father and he died trying to save his family, he can never be replaced," she said. "We got nobody now. All we got is us."

About half a mile away, mourners piled inside and outside Vicks' mother's house at Hollywood and Huntingdon streets, in Strawberry Mansion. "We're just so overwhelmed right now" with three funerals, said Renee Carmichael, the grieving mother.

"She was a beautiful person," she said of her daughter. "She did all she could for other people."

Vicks graduated from YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School, on North Broad Street, and went to its prom in a stunning gold-colored sleeveless dress, friends said. Besides Payhje, Vicks also had a 10-year-old son.

Tiaisha Dandy, 26, a close friend of Vicks', said that the son lives with his father's side of the family.

Dandy said that she spoke to Vicks the weekend before Valentine's Day. "She was really excited" about the new house, and was "out to get curtains," Dandy said.

"She was excited for her and the baby."