Mulvane, Kansas - Two little girls have died after being trapped in a burning home in Mulvane. It happened in the 400 block of E. Bridge.
"I heard a scream, woke up the house was full of smoke," says Kristian Slaybaugh, who scrambled to get through smoke and flames to save his two daughters. "I tried to run through the house to save them."
Slaybaugh says he and his wife were at home napping over the noon hour when they smelled smoke. Slaybaugh sent his wife outside to call 911 while he tried to get into the back bedroom.
"I knew it was too late by then because I opened that door and it was just engulfed in flames and wasn't nothing I could do. Not a thing."
Just before fire crews arrived, Slaybaugh went outside and used a tree branch to smash the girl's bedroom window while a neighbor tried to go in through the front door.
"And I got to the door and this big old cloud of black smoke hit me," says neighbor Francis Blochlinger, "and I got to the couch and it starts burning and then my arms start to heat up and I back up and realize there's nothing I could have done."
As of nightfall, Monday, investigators were looking at a malfunctioning furnace as a possible source of ignition. The girl's bedroom is next to the furnace.
"I don't know," says neighbor Christy Blochlinger, " Sometimes they would heat the house with the stove, so... But their momma was just in that bedroom playing with (girls) them not fifteen minutes before."
Gone in the blaze is 3-year-old Alessandra and 4-year-old Ashlynn Slaybaugh. A 7-year-old brother was at school when the fire broke out.
A police-fire task force is trying to find the cause of the fire. The Red Cross is helping the family this week because the house is destroyed.
