Socorro community mourning death of three children

A Socorro family is mourning the devastating loss of three children.

Police say the three children younger than 10 died in a mobile home fire at around 6:30 p.m. Friday evening

The fire happened at a trailer park on the 400 block of Newell Hays Street in El Paso’s lower valley.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Saturday nearby residents are heartbroken over the deaths.

Many of the nearby residents ABC-7 spoke with witnessed the tragic events.

They say at the time they didn’t know there were children inside the home. Many of them told ABC-7 the family had only lived there about two months.

In video sent to ABC-7 by Elsa Broadbent, the fire can be heard roaring and crackling as fire crews begin to douse the blaze.

Rita Puente said her daughter was telling her to get out of her home only two spaces away.

“We thought all of the mobile homes were going to catch fire,” Puente said.

Nearby resident Suseth Osorneo says the flames were high as the home was collapsing.

Puente told ABC-7 an elderly man inside escaped out of a window and was bleeding from his stomach but she says he managed to pull out a young boy.

“The man jumped out of the window and cut himself on all the glass,” Puente said.

By nightfall, all that was left was a frame of the home.

“There was a lot of smoke,” said Destiny Hidalgo, who used to live in the mobile home that went up in a blaze, and whose mother rented the home to the family.

Saturday afternoon, relatives of Hidalgo began to clear out the piles of burnt wood.

Kids from the trailer park left behind stuffed animals, one for each child who died.

“It was really bad. Those poor kids … I cried all night,” Puente said.

Just before 5 p.m. Saturday, a woman rushed into the site of the burnt mobile home. She went through piles of wood, pulling out childrens clothes. Burnt and torn she grabbed them, smelled them and began crying.

Residents told ABC-7 it was the children’s stepmother who cared for them.

ABC-7 archives show the last time there was multiple children who died in a house fire was in 2012 in northeast El Paso where two young boys died.

There is a GoFundMe page called “House fire took our three babys (sic)” set up by Christopher Pedroza on Sept. 24, asking for “help for Funeral cost (sic) and a place to live. Anything will help.”

The fund creator has a goal set at $10,000. Donate here.