FIRE! a Christmas horror

[Lady Cop]

the sorrowful explanation:

Smoldering embers blamed for a Christmas morning house fire that killed three girls and their grandparents had been taken out of a fireplace so the children would not worry about Santa Claus coming down the chimney, two officials briefed on the investigation said on Tuesday.

The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way.


so why not pour some water over the embers? God, what awful price stupidity.

[Lady Cop]

NYPost
A grief-stricken Madonna Badger walked out of a Manhattan funeral home this morning where a private wake for her three daughters and parents who died in a tragic Christmas Day fire at her Connecticut home is set to be held.
She declined to speak with reporters.

The Badger girls and their doting grandparents will be mourned today at a private wake at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel on the Upper East Side.

A funeral service for the girls, open to the public, is slated for 10:30 a.m. tomorrow at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue.

A private service for the Johnsons will be held later that day, said funeral-home President George Amato.

[Midwest Spy]

NYPost
A grief-stricken Madonna Badger walked out of a Manhattan funeral home this morning where a private wake for her three daughters and parents who died in a tragic Christmas Day fire at her Connecticut home is set to be held.
She declined to speak with reporters.

The Badger girls and their doting grandparents will be mourned today at a private wake at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel on the Upper East Side.

A funeral service for the girls, open to the public, is slated for 10:30 a.m. tomorrow at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue.

A private service for the Johnsons will be held later that day, said funeral-home President George Amato.

I don't think anyone will ever comprehend the grief and guilt she'll feel the rest of her days...

I understand, now, the reason for taking the embers out of the fireplace, but, like LC said, simply put some water on them.

Very tragic.

[pspence]

I was shocked about the responses from many people on a blog about this on the New York Post. About the boyfriend putting the ashes in the bucket so they wouldn't hurt Santa.

the majority wanted to fry the contractor/boyfriend who did it. I noticed he wasn't one of the men holding the lady up. some said the bio dad should sue the mother and contractor/boyfriend for all they have, etc.

yes it was so stupid but the guy surely didn't have any malicious intent. just all so sad/tragic. RIP little ones.

[Lady Cop]

pspence:
yes it was so stupid but the guy surely didn't have any malicious intent.


i haven't read the blog.
you ever hear the phrase "criminal negligence?" intent not an element.
similar to felony stupid, but worse. and can be charged.
hell, i'd consider a charge of involuntary manslaughter.

Madonna Badger's estranged husband and father of the children, Matthew Badger, joined her at the funeral home on Wednesday evening.





Mourners gather at Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue on Thursday

[Lady Cop]

Grace, Sarah and Lily Badger

[Duchess]

Oh God. Their grief is palpable.

[Lady Cop]

now that the horrible funeral ordeal is over, i have an opinion that i wish to express. it's been hard to get this needless tragedy out of my mind.
of course the contractor had no evil deadly intent.
but he is supposed to be a licensed, paid contractor as well as the mother's boyfriend. he let that family move into a home with none of the required smoke alarms and without the permit for human habitation. it simply was not ready to be occupied. he knew that. and i have to assume so did she.

his act of bagging up hot embers without even taking a minute and a bucket of water boggles the rational mind.

so there he is with his hand on her shoulder while she stands next to the father of those children who is crushed and devastated and probably still in shock. how dare he stand there?? that father should have ripped his face off, but he had too much class.

i hope he brings legal action to bear.

i'd like to see the authorities bring criminal action. 5 counts of reckless manslaughter.


edit to add: when i dump a damn ashtray into the trash i pour water on the contents!

[pspence]

I know you are right LC. If he (boyfriend) was charged with reckless manslaughter it might prevent one idiot out there from doing the same thing or knowing that being stupid isn't going to get you off...that would be worth it. That doesn't mean I don't feel a little sorry for the guy since his motive (albeit dumb) was to humor the girls, that Santa wouldn't be hurt. I did read somewhere that he took the bucket outside and the wind blew the embers towards the house.

I'm kind of surprised to see the boyfriend with his hand on her shoulder...kind of shocking their relationship appears to have survived this. Like you said too, that father has a lot of class to hold up his former wife like that...if that happened on my X's watch I would be so devestated/pisst/every emotion in the book I'm not sure I could even look at them.

I too can't get this out of my head. A tragedy beyond words. What a horrible way to go. Those little angels.

[Sterling]

I was shocked about the responses from many people on a blog about this on the New York Post.

yes it was so stupid but the guy surely didn't have any malicious intent. just all so sad/tragic. RIP little ones.

If a child dies while in your custody - YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE! If you are so irresponsible that your child is removed from your home and dies in foster care - YOU SHOULD BE CHARGED WITH THE FOSTER PARENT.

http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/jus...g-01052012

[Lady Cop]

and across the pond...4 kids dead in a fire. no cause given yet. :(

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...night.html

[NightOwl]

What a tragedy! How brave of the 19 year old brother to try and save the younger ones!

It looks like a British Bungalow style home and it is a ground floor usually but, after reading the article it looks like they converted up there in the rafters of the roof a loft, they mentioned the stairs all burned so the young ones must have been up in the new loft, good grief to be trapped up there yet. Then it sounds like they were all out side partying away - you just cannot turn your back on little kids. God help them!

[Jezreel]

and across the pond...4 kids dead in a fire. no cause given yet. :(

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...night.html

An update on this tragic story...


An 18-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a house fire left four siblings dead.
The teenager, from Lytham, Lancashire, was arrested following the fire last Saturday evening.
Police confirmed today the fire was started inside a wardrobe in one of the bedrooms at the house on Lytham Road, Freckleton.

Four people, Reece Smith, 19, four-year-old twin girls Holly and Ella Smith and Jordan Smith, two, were killed in the blaze.
Detective Chief Inspector Neil Esseen, from Lancashire Police, said: 'I can confirm that this fire is now being treated as suspicious. We are following a number of lines of inquiry and have spoken with a number of people who were at the house on the night in question.
'However, I would still urge anybody who has any information which they believe could assist us with our investigation to come forward.'

Yesterday it emerged smoke alarms in the house were not working when the tragedy occurred.
Post-mortem examinations gave the cause of the four deaths as smoke inhalation.
Lancashire Fire Service confirmed the smoke alarms were fitted but were not working when the fire started.
The family allowed the Fire Service to reveal the information in the hope other families would test their smoke alarms to avert similar tragedies.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z1jA883fsf

[Lady Cop]

i expected this. officials want to determine if house had working smoke detectors.

Investigators have interviewed a New York City advertising executive whose three daughters and parents died in a Christmas morning fire at her Connecticut home.

Stamford police sergeant Paul Guzda says police interviewed Madonna Badger on Thursday night, though he would not discuss any further details.

Foul play is not suspected in the fire, which Ms Badger and her friend Michael Borcina escaped.

Mr Borcina is a contractor who had been renovating the five-bedroom $1.7million house. Mr Guzda says police plan to interview Mr Borcina soon.


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manha...froZBojPrK

[IMaDick]

i expected this. officials want to determine if house had working smoke detectors.

Investigators have interviewed a New York City advertising executive whose three daughters and parents died in a Christmas morning fire at her Connecticut home.

Stamford police sergeant Paul Guzda says police interviewed Madonna Badger on Thursday night, though he would not discuss any further details.

Foul play is not suspected in the fire, which Ms Badger and her friend Michael Borcina escaped.

Mr Borcina is a contractor who had been renovating the five-bedroom $1.7million house. Mr Guzda says police plan to interview Mr Borcina soon.


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manha...froZBojPrK

Are smoke detectors required in New York?

If not I don't see any reason to ask the question.

unless of course the police work for the insurance company.

[NightOwl]

I wonder if Mr. & Mrs. Badger knew all this about this contractor? Shocking story!


From The Stamford Advocate

Borcina has troubled legal history
Christmas blaze: Ex-clients seek payments from contractor
Jeff Morganteen, Staff Writer
Updated 11:56 p.m., Thursday, January 19, 2012

STAMFORD -- Michael Borcina, the contractor overseeing renovations at the Shippan Avenue mansion consumed in the Christmas morning fire that killed three young sisters and their grandparents, has a trail of legal judgments and pending lawsuits over disputes from past jobs, court files show.

Borcina owes nearly $100,000 in legal judgments from two past projects in Manhattan and upstate Connecticut. According to a source familiar with the lawsuits, one of the former clients tried serving Borcina with legal documents during his hospital stay following the Shippan Avenue fire, in which he suffered burns and smoke inhalation.

Borcina also faces lawsuits from two more recent clients in Manhattan and Long Island. The complaints, filed over projects from the past two years, seek nearly $75,000.

Borcina's attorney, Eugene Riccio, declined to comment for the story. Since Borcina escaped the Shippan Avenue home during the fire on Christmas morning -- which Stamford fire officials initially said started when Borcina discarded fireplace embers in a plastic bag -- scrutiny on the contractor and his business has mounted. With clients such as television personality Gayle King and an award-winning director, Borcina's high-end construction company, Tiberias, catered to upper-crust clientele, despite his rocky legal history.

One former client, identified through court records as Maurice Sonnenberg, a senior international adviser at JP Morgan Chase, won an $86,666 judgment against Borcina six years ago. Sonnenberg, a former adviser in several U.S. presidential administrations, filed a lawsuit against Borcina in 2004 at state Superior Court in Danbury after hiring Greenwich attorney Philip Russell.

Sonnenberg accused Borcina of breaching two contracts by failing to complete a pair of home improvement projects in winter 2001 at his Manhattan apartment, according to court documents. Two years after filing the lawsuit, Sonnenberg won a judgment ordering Borcina to pay $31,666 in damages, $50,000 on lost rental income from the unfinished apartment, and $5,000 in attorney's fees.

Borcina didn't hire an attorney, nor did he appear on his behalf in the lawsuit, according to the court file. The court awarded the $86,666 judgment in February 2006 after checking whether Borcina was serving in the U.S. military.

Holly Flor, a Roxbury woman who hired Borcina for a restoration in 1999, said she and her husband were unable to locate him after they secured a $15,000 judgment against him in a 2001 lawsuit filed at state Superior Court in Litchfield. She and her husband fired Borcina from the renovation job because of his erratic and unprofessional behavior, she said.

"He fancied himself a big-time contractor," Flor said. "I think what he was, was a skilled carpenter."

Flor recalled Borcina as bombastic and aggressive, especially with his employees. His personality often appeared to get in the way of the job, she said, which languished over a four- to six-month period. Turnover among workers was high during the renovation, she recalled, and his personal life seemed turbulent. She often was unable to reach him by phone, and he blamed missed appointments on car trouble and other excuses, Flor said.

"Even when I first met him he was always this testosterone-driven personality," Flor said. "This macho thing came through as his modus operandi."

At one point, he asked to move into Flor's home, she said. He lived in a wing of their large home for several weeks during the renovation.

More than a decade later, Borcina was staying at the Shippan Avenue home of Madonna Badger, a 47-year-old New York City advertising executive, when a raging fire ripped through the house and killed Badger's three daughters and her parents Christmas morning. Borcina and Badger escaped the fire. The intense heat of the fire pushed firefighters from the house during several rescue attempts.

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/art...php#page-1

Read page 2 at link above.

[Lady Cop]

clearly he doesn't care about judgements. he can evade them for a long time.
but i won't be surprised to see criminal charges down the road.


2 days ago
MANHATTAN — The boyfriend of ad executive Madonna Badger, who escaped a devastating Christmas Day house fire in Connecticut that killed Badger's parents and children, has been quizzed by cops, police said.

Michael Borcina, whose company was performing renovations on the Stamford home at the time, was interviewed by police at his lawyer's office in Greenwich, Conn., Monday night, according to the Daily Yorktown.

Stamford police confirmed the interview to DNAinfo, but declined to comment about it further because of the ongoing investigation.

Borcina's lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[Lady Cop]

police will decide within a couple weeks whether to file criminal charges.

The house did not have a new certificate of occupancy since the Badgers moved in, and Mr Borcina’s contracting licenses had expired at the time of the fire. His contractor registration for work in the state of Connecticut expired in 2000, and his home improvement license for the state of New York expired in June 2010.

Mr Borcina has hired Eugene Riccio, a high-profile criminal defence attorney, to represent him in this case, but this is not his first run in with the law over his construction sites. The house did not have a new certificate of occupancy since the Badgers moved in, and Mr Borcina’s contracting licenses had expired at the time of the fire. His contractor registration for work in the state of Connecticut expired in 2000, and his home improvement license for the state of New York expired in June 2010.

charges of criminally negligent homicide or reckless manslaughter are both possible charges in a case like this.

[Duchess]

When hiring a contractor one should ALWAYS get references, there is no excuse not to get several, you want to see work they have accomplished as well. I'm very surprised that he was able to get such top dollar jobs given his reputation.

[Lady Cop]

i don't know how credible this is. but it wouldn't be surprising.

NYPost

Manhattan ad executive Madonna Badger, whose three young daughters and parents were killed in a horrific Christmas-morning fire at her Connecticut mansion, reportedly attempted suicide.

Badger was rushed to the hospital last week after the bid, WCBS/Channel 2 said last night.

The grieving mom “is now in a safe place surrounded by family and longtime friends,” a source told the station.

Badger’s lawyer, Stanley Twardy Jr., refused to comment to The Post on the report.