911 call reveals horror as Keys fire kills woman and her 2 children

The 911 call placed by the older sister of the two children and daughter of the mother killed in a Ramrod Key house fire Sunday morning sets a scene of pure horror and frustration as she tried in vain to break a window from outside the fully-engulfed home to free her loved ones.

During the five-minute, 30-second call, Courtney Shores, 19, frantically tells the 911 operator that she can’t get inside the Anguila Lane home and that she can hear her family members screaming.

Robin Ferrer, 46, Roman Ferrer, 7, and 5-year-old Hazel Ferrer died inside the burning home early Sunday morning.

“They’re trapped upstairs,” Courtney tells the dispatcher during the call, made about 12:35 a.m.

“Do you know if they’re awake,” the dispatcher asks.

“Yes, they’re screaming,” Courtney replies.

The dispatcher asks Courtney if there is a ladder “or anywhere else they can jump to.”

Courtney answers, “No. They’re locked in. They’re locked inside.”

When the dispatcher asks Courtney if she sees flames, she responds:

“The entire house is on fire. I can see flames. They’re trapped. There’s only one way out, and it’s on fire.”

For reasons that aren’t clear yet, Courtney, and other people, tried, but could not break a window to the home.

“We’re trying, but there’s no way to break it,” she tells the dispatcher.

The operator asks Courtney what room the mother and children are in, since she said minutes earlier that she heard screams. Courtney answers that the screaming had stopped.

“I heard screaming like two minutes ago,” she says. “I can’t hear it now.”

Courtney was able to break the window of the room in which she thought the children were sleeping, but they weren’t there.

“We broke that window, and they didn’t come out,” she says. “We didn’t hear anything.”

Courtney is then heard away from the phone saying, “Jacob, this one.”

Jacob is likely Jacob Shores, Robin Ferrer’s 18-year-old son. He suffered severe burns trying to get inside to save his family. He was flown to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center in Miami. He is expected to recover.

This story was originally published June 23, 2015 at 7:57 AM with the headline "911 call reveals horror as Keys fire kills woman and her 2 children."