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'I Couldn't Do Anything,' Neighbor Says Of Deadly Fire

Tribune photo by JAY NOLAN

A 4-year-old boy and his mother died from injuries in a fire that started about midnight Tuesday at a mobile home in Lutz. His father is in critical condition.

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By KEITH MORELLI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 17, 2008

Updated: 04/17/2008 06:15 am

LUTZ - The boy was inquisitive and prone to wandering the Sunrise Mobile Home Park, filled with older trailers, stray cats and old oak trees heavy with moss.

For a 4-year-old, Gabriel Pita was strong, and he had figured out how to push open the back door of his home to get outside to explore. He was mentally challenged, neighbors said, and oblivious to some of the dangers around him, such as adjacent Crystal Lake Road or the retention pond fronting the dark woods to the west.

To help protect him, his parents, Mariano Pita, 44, and Crystal Dooley, 37, used bolts to fasten shut the back door of their mobile home so the boy couldn't get out, neighbors said.

About midnight Tuesday, there was a fire.

Mariano Pita ended up in critical condition at University Community Hospital. Dooley was taken to Tampa General Hospital's critical care unit, where she died. The boy died, too.

His grandmother, Connie Dooley, declined to talk about the family.

Hillsborough County firefighters responded about midnight Tuesday to the alarm inside the mobile home park on U.S. 41, just south of Sunset Lane. They entered the mobile home and found one victim by the back door and two in a bedroom. All three were dragged outside, and paramedics tried to revive them.

Neighbors Will Never Forget

It was a sight neighbors won't soon forget.

Timothy Salzer said it was about midnight when he saw flames in the mobile home, less than 20 feet from his own, which was left with buckled siding Wednesday.

"My wife was screaming that the place was on fire," he said early Wednesday. He said he broke a window out with a fire extinguisher and tried to douse the flames with a garden hose.

He couldn't knock the fire down, Salzer said.

"By that time, it had spread," he said. "I stuck myself in the window, and it was so hot, so hot. I couldn't do anything. I tried to get inside, but I couldn't see anything.

"It was kind of scary."

Salzer said he has known his neighbors more than a year. Salzer's sister-in-law, Tabitha Johnson, also was at the fire scene, yelling for the trapped people to get out.

"They said, 'We're trying to. We're trying to,'" Johnson said.

The fire spread quickly, she said, and there were popping sounds coming from inside the burning home. Then a thud, like the sound of a body hitting the floor, and then only the sounds of the fire, she said.

Johnson said the family had to use bolts to fasten the back door to keep the child from wandering. "He used to get out all the time," she said.

She said firefighters used tools to tear the door down from the outside.

Catherine Burdick lives in a neatly kept mobile home across the street. She said the boy often used to "break out" and stroll over to her place. He would play with her lawn ornament, a small dog with a welcome sign around its neck. He played with kittens in her yard.

"They were devoted to that child," she said. "He was a cute little thing."

Burdick said the family was planning to move at the end of the month. The mobile home park had begun eviction proceedings against them, but a judge ruled in March that Pita and Dooley could stay until April 30, court records show.

Cause Undetermined

Wednesday morning, only the charred, gutted remains of the single-wide mobile home remained, telling a silent tale of what happened just eight hours before.

Yellow caution tape surrounded the burned-out building, strung between oak trees and a parked pickup that looked like it hadn't moved in months. Children's toys littered the yard, and the nozzle of Salzer's hose, on the ground between the two mobile homes, hissed and sputtered a steady spray of water.

The fire buckled the mobile home's metal roof, which collapsed onto the kitchen. The ceiling, walls and floor of a narrow hall leading to the bedrooms were black with soot. Yellow insulation littered the floor.

Neighbor William Herzog said the child was strong-willed and physically "solid."

Herzog won't forget watching firefighters and paramedics trying to revive the boy on the ground outside the smoldering home. "It's terrible," he said. "He was a little off. He used to run around a lot."

Herzog knew the boy's parents bolted the back door to keep the child safely inside.

"They did what they had to do to keep him safe, but it came back on them," he said.

Fire investigators had no comment on whether the bolts hindered the family's escape from the fire. Hillsborough County Fire Rescue Capt. Bruce Delk said the fire's cause had not been determined and the case was under investigation.

Investigators' progress hinges on interviews with the survivors, he said. "Otherwise," he said, "we're just making a calculated guess."

News Channel 8 reporter Chip Osowski contributed to this report. Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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