Police And Family Ask Why? After 4-Yr.-Old Boy And Pregnant Mom Die In Fire

When people die in a fire, the family and the community often ask “why?” But when 22-year-old Schanelle Brown and her four-year-old son Jahshy Buchanan perished in a  blaze around 6pm Tuesday night, those questions were being asked by another source: Toronto Police.

By now, you’ve likely heard about the terrible fate that befell the little boy and his mom, who was eight months pregnant. They were found along with two others in the master bedroom of an apartment at 2460 Weston Rd. near the 401, after a smokey 3-alarm fire that took less an hour to extinguish.

One of the survivors remains in critical condition in hospital, while the other is said to be doing much better. Authorities want to know about witness reports that someone briefly ventured out of the ninth floor unit as the fire was burning and the smoke was spreading, heard the warning shouts of neighbours and yet still turned around and went back inside, closing the door behind her.

Firefighters later found all four of them, and believe the blaze actually started in the front living room. It was the dinner hour, when people are usually busy and moving around. They have no idea why the quartet didn’t try to flee the apartment – and that’s made it a police matter.

“We do have eyewitnesses who have indicated that they did approach the apartment, they did alert the occupants, it was evident that smoke was emanating from the unit of origin, and yet the occupant chose to go back into the unit,” a puzzled Wayne Romaine of the Ontario Fire Marshal’s Office explains.

As the experts try to figure out that why, the relatives of the lost pair are asking the same agonizing question in another context, questioning the reasons such a terrible tragedy hit their family.

Their grief and their tears were both heart felt and heartbreaking. “My beloved first daughter, first born, who I struggled so hard as a single mother,” laments a tortured Anne-Marie Segree. “You know what it’s like to grow up and bring your children to this age and they’re just gone? My daughter’s gone and my little Jahshy!”

The 22-year-old’s sibling is inconsolable. “I don’t know what I am going to do without my sister!” Lauralee Walker wails. “She was my best friend.”

For Segree, the mother of four, it’s a loss that will haunt her forever. Her daughter asked her to bring the youngster home from school on the day he died, but she was too busy at work. “If I had just gone to pick my grandson up, maybe I could have saved him,” she reels, tragically stuck in a “what if” replay that may last a lifetime.

Ironically, when neighbours last saw little Jahshy the day before, he was in the hallway outside of the apartment playing with a toy fire truck.

Police continue to treat the apartment as a possible crime scene as the probe into what really happened during that critical hour continues. Autopsy results are pending.

As Segree gets set to bury her daughter and grandson, she knows she lost more than just the two she held so dear. Shanelle was expecting a little girl – her granddaughter – next month.