Father of boy who died in west Modesto house fire makes plea from hospital bed
The father of the 18-month old boy who died in a west Modesto house fire on Saturday made a plea from his hospital bed in the burn unit of UC Davis Medical Center. The family needs help getting their son’s body back to Mexico.
“I’m asking for support from all my friends,” Sergio Torres said in Spanish. “I had an accident last Saturday in which I lost my son. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to save him. And I need your support to help me take him back to my country, to Mexico.”
The boy, who’s identified in a Go Fund Me page as Axel Torres, was playing alone in the room where the fire started at a home in the 400 block of Martin Luther King Drive.
Sergio Torres, the boy’s mother and another adult who were in the home, as well as three bystanders, all tried to get to the boy but could not.
All of them suffered injuries ranging from smoke inhalation to burns. Three were hospitalized, including Torres, who suffered the most severe burns.
In the video, extensive burns can be seen on Torres’s face and there are dressings on his left arm and chest.
The woman who posted the video and set up the GoFundMe account wrote on the fundraising page that the family came to the Unites States five months ago in search of a better life.
They reportedly had been in Modesto just a few days.
“Unfortunately they have no family here and they can use all the help then can get to take their beloved son back to their homeland,” she wrote.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
This story was originally published March 5, 2020 at 12:06 PM.
