Kids who died in Monday’s fire were supposed to go to Disney on Tuesday, friend said
The three children who died in Monday’s house fire in Miami’s Grapeland Heights area had been planning to go to Disney World with their family for New Year’s Eve, a family friend said Tuesday.
No new official information was released on the tragedy that killed three of the four children, aged 1 to 12, found unconscious Monday morning and taken to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital. The fire at 3621 NW 18th Terrace, which has been deemed unfit for occupancy after the fire, remains under investigation.
From state records, online databases, social media and speaking with friends and neighbors, a few pieces of knowledge emerged:
Grandmother Norma Bonilla, 57, lived in the home in front of which a tricycle and a scooter sat Tuesday afternoon. Miami-Dade property records say the house is owned by Miami resident Ronald Firman. Sunbiz.org lists Bonilla at that address as a director for one of Firman’s companies, The Firman Foundation.
(A Tuesday afternoon message on one of Firman’s cellphones said that he was not accepting calls at this time.)
Neighbors said they didn’t know exactly who lived in the house with Bonilla, but they knew she was the grandmother of three of the four children in the house Monday. Social media posts said at least three of the children were siblings.
“I always saw the kids playing outside with their toys,” next-door neighbor Eidy Diaz said.
Someone who only identified herself as a friend of Bonilla’s from Honduras (the family’s Facebook pages say they’re from Trujillo in Honduras) went to the house Tuesday. She said that three of the kids were Bonilla’s grandchildren and lived with her.
She said that the entire family had planned to go to Orlando on Tuesday to celebrate New Year’s Eve at Disney World.
Relatives and friends mourned on Facebook. One relative from the Trujillo, Colón, area of Honduras, posted two emotional videos of the children. There were montages of photos from birthday parties, children hugging each other, laughing with relatives, dressed as Iron Man, enjoying activities such as eating on the couch.
Bonilla wasn’t home when the fire started, neighbors say. Hector Alfonso, who lives across from Bonilla’s home, said he saw a woman dressed in black and screaming outside the house. Other neighbors across the street tried to break windows to get to the kids.
“When I got here, she was on the ground,” said the neighbor Diaz, who said she wasn’t home when the fire broke out but rushed back after neighbors informed her of what was going on.
She wasn’t sure if Bonilla had fallen. The paramedics tended to Bonilla and Diaz comforted her.
“She kept saying, ‘Los niños, los niños. No se nada de los niños.’ “ (“The kids, I don’t know anything about the kids.”)
This story was originally published December 31, 2019 at 6:59 PM.
