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Tragedy In West Virginia: Child Is Ninth Victim Of House Fire

On Saturday, investigators sifted through debris in the aftermath of a house fire in Charleston, W.Va., that has now claimed nine lives.
Craig Cunningham
/
AP
On Saturday, investigators sifted through debris in the aftermath of a house fire in Charleston, W.Va., that has now claimed nine lives.

"A house fire believed to be the worst in Charleston's history claimed its ninth victim Sunday," West Virginia's Sunday Gazette-Mail reports.

According to the newspaper, 7-year-old Bryan Timothy Camp was taken off life support Sunday morning. The fire at the home he lived in with his mother, her boyfriend, an aunt and six other children began around 3:25 a.m. ET on Saturday. Only the aunt survived. The Gazette-Mail says the rental home had no working smoke detectors.

The cause of the blaze is still under investigation, the Charleston Daily Mail reports. It adds that the school Bryan Timothy Camp and his 8-year-old sister Keahana attended is bracing for the reactions of other children today.

"It's the job of investigators to determine the cause of the fire," the Daily Mail writes. "For [the boy's] and the rest of Shoals Elementary, the task is equally, if not more, daunting: explaining to elementary students why Timothy and his 8-year-old sister Keahana — a second grader — aren't sitting at their desks this morning."

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.