Quenisha Roberson was ready to come home from the hospital Thursday — but there was no home to come to.
So instead she and her 3‑year-old daughter Taleya headed to a motel where the rest of her devastated family was staying, for now, in the wake of a raging fire that destroyed their home and, according to the cops, was a triple homicide.
The Roberson family was in the first stages of coping with an unspeakable tragedy of a kind that most people, thankfully, will never experience. Someone set fire to their Fair Haven apartment building around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday. A host of family members rushed to escape. Three perished in the flames; the rest climbed ladders, jumped out windows or were thrown into the arms of neighbors and firefighters to safety. (The precise details, like numbers of people involved and who lived in the house versus who was just visiting, remained difficult to pin down Thursday.)
By noon Thursday all but two of the survivors had left the hospital. A 1‑year-old baby girl, Jarell, remained at Yale-New Haven recovering from smoke inhalation; her mom remained with her.
The others regrouped in two adjoining rooms at an out-of-town motel where they’ve been put up for at least another day. They have only the clothes with which they escaped from the blaze. Nine family members in all — a grandmother, three adult males, two young women, a 9‑year-old boy, a baby girl, and Taleya, who’s a size 4T — need help. Clothing, linens, toys, and (most needed of all) financial donations can be dropped off at the former school building at St. Brendan’s Church, 342 Ellsworth Ave., (near Whalley), from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday or 9 a.m. to noon Saturday. (For information call 203 – 503-0107.)
The scene at the motel Thursday was chaotic: relatives and friends coming and going, a motel maid vacuuming, calls to be made about where the federal Section 8 program might find them a place to live, the boys heading to the pool to swim, sudden outbursts of tears in between stoic storytelling, Quenisha arriving with her leg in a cast. She winced in pain from having broken her foot in the fall.
Contributed Photo
Quayshawn.
She and other family members talked about their dramatic escapes and rescues from the fire. They talked about the three who didn’t make it out: Wanda Roberson, 42; her son Quayshawn, 8, a second-grader at Clinton Avenue School; and Jaquita Roberson, a cousin who was 21.
Amid it all sat Margaret Roberson, 66, the grandmother. She is suddenly the guardian for young boys with no homes. She’s mourning the loss of her daughter, her grandson and another family member.
Margaret was staying with her family in the two-story apartment on the second and third floors of the building at Wolcott and Poplar streets. Most of her children and grandchildren were asleep shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday. She sat in the second-floor living room reading a romance novel. She doesn’t remember what romance novel it was.
She does remember smelling something burning.
“I got up to see what it was,” she said. “Sometimes you turn the oven on and the oven doesn’t light, and the gas is smelling. [I figured] the flame had went out. I got up. I looked.”
The oven was off. Then she looked toward the front door. She saw a small flame under it.
“I went to get some water. It was little at first. I was going to pour some water on it.”
Then Jaquita opened the door. She had come down from upstairs.
“I saw the hallway. It was lit from across the hall to our door.”
Margaret rushed to tell the others on the second floor what had happened. She woke Quenisha, who was with Taleya sleeping in a second-floor bedroom.
“Telly” Brentell, a 16-year-old Wilbur Cross High School junior — had rushed downstairs from the third floor to help. His mother Wanda was still on the third floor getting people out.
“The house was so smoky. He was wondering where she [Wanda] was,” Margaret recalled.
“He opened the window. He told me to go out the living-room window to a porch roof.
Margaret and several others made it to the porch. A crowd had gathered outside: neighbors, cops, firefighters.
“We stayed there. We were still waiting for Wanda to come down. She never came down. Telly kept wondering where his mother was.”
A fire truck appeared on the scene. Firefighters placed ladders next to the roof. Margaret climbed down one of them. Telly climbed down another.
On the ground, Telly — who has his mother Wanda’s name tattooed on his neck — and others started catching other relatives jumping from windows. People were escaping from both the Robersons’ apartment and another duplex on the other side of the building.
Quenisha grabbed Taleya. She threw her out the bedroom window into the arms of Brandon, 19, one of Quenisha’s brothers who had made it out.
Another sister, Jasmine, 18, and her baby escaped the same way. Finally Quenisha jumped, too. Someone caught her, but not completely. Her leg hit the ground hard. “I landed on my foot,” she said. Her foot was broken.
“I jumped,” third-grader Quayvon said. “That guy down the street caught me.” Quayvon then ran over to Richard Street, where his aunt Lynn lives. He woke up first-floor neighbors, who woke up Lynn. Lynn rushed over to the house.
Quayvon’s brother Quayshawn (pictured), one year behind him at Clinton Avenue School, wasn’t so lucky. He was on the third flloor with his mother. Neither made it out alive.
The next morning, Thursday, Margaret gathered the family together at the motel. She knew they would stay there that night. She didn’t know where she’d stay the next night.
She hadn’t yet heard from New Haven government’s Livable City Initiative (LCI). But LCI has worked “around the clock” to line up new housing for them and the next-door neighbors, according to agency chief Erik Johnson. He said both families receive rental assistance under the federal government’s Section 8 program. LCI is working with the housing authority to make sure Wanda Roberson’s voucher is transferred to the family so it can move in a new place, Johnson said.
“The city is going to take the lead to make sure the families have safe and affordable housing,” Johnson said Thursday.
Margaret Roberson and her kids appealed to the public to donate clothing for the family at St. Brendan’s.
Meanwhile, police are working to find the person or persons who torched the house. Accelerant was found in a back stairway.
The house is legally owned by Lili Khorsandi, 62, of Roslyn Heights, N.Y. City records list her as owning three other properties in the city, too. One, on Peck Street, is boarded-up and abandoned. A tenant at another, on Chatham Street, said she’s a decent landlord.
That tenant — and the Robersons — said the real person they deal with isn’t Khorsandi, but a man named Michael Shamash. The Robersons, who lived in the Poplar/Wolcott house for about a year, said he was a bad landlord, who never responded to pleas for repairs. (“He fights with you,” Margaret said.) The Independent couldn’t reach him or Khorsandi for comment.
LCI’s Johnson said Khorsandi and Shamash are either married or “in a relationship.” He said they own houses throughout the city, some in her name, some in his, some under the name of a limited liability corporation. He called their properties “a mixed bag.” “A mixed bag. Some have tax issues. Some do not. I would say they are an average to mediocre property owner.” LCI staff has been in touch with them since the fire, Johnson said.
On Thursday, Margaret issued one more appeal — to her son Willie. He recently got out of jail. She asked that he contact her. “I don’t know where he is,” she said, crying.