{"id":25897,"date":"2025-11-02T15:16:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T15:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/25897\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T15:16:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T15:16:27","slug":"the-kids-were-always-laughing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/25897\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The kids were always laughing’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A neighbor of the family killed by a Halloween night fire that destroyed their Paterson home is \u201cdevastated\u201d that she couldn\u2019t rescue them in time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried. We tried,\u201d said Fatima Ali, who lived next door to the family. \u201cWe were able to help the first floor. We couldn\u2019t do the second. And we are devastated, because these are people we saw every day for the past six years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese kids were always there laughing. It\u2019s just a horrible feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family, which included three children aged 14, 12 and 7, were all found dead<\/a> in the second floor of their New Jersey home Friday. Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh said the father was Palestinian and related to NJ assemblyman Al Abdelaziz.<\/p>\n

A family of five was killed in a New Jersey house fire. Kyle Mazza\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The fire broke out around 10 p.m. and spread quickly thanks to strong winds in the area, according to fire officials.<\/p>\n

Ali said that her kids first noticed that their neighbor\u2019s backyard was on fire<\/a> when they saw smoke emerging from the house.<\/p>\n

The blaze started beneath a staircase that leads to the second floor \u2014 where there was always piles of wood stacked, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy kids were outside playing soccer, it\u2019s cold. \u2026 All of a sudden, my son\u2019s like, \u2018do you smell something?\u2019 And my daughter\u2019s like \u2018that\u2019s smoke, mom, look, there\u2019s smoke over there on that house,’\u201d Ali said.<\/p>\n

A neighbor revealed her desperate attempts to save them. Christopher Sadowski<\/p>\n

Three children were killed along with their parents. LP Media<\/p>\n

She said she ran to their house and banged on their door yelling \u201cyour whole backyard is on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three families each lived on a separate floor of the home, according to neighbors.<\/p>\n

Ali found the first-floor family watching TV, unaware of the inferno starting to rage. She said the first floor family had two babies.<\/p>\n

The mother, after Ali came to her door, checked her daughter\u2019s room and realized that it was filled with smoke, and the family quickly fled \u2014 but she \u201cwas screaming, there\u2019s kids upstairs. There\u2019s kids upstairs,\u201d Ali said.<\/p>\n

Ali said the fire started in the backyard of the home. Kyle Mazza\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Ali\u2019s nephew tried to rush to the second floor to rescue the children, but the stairs leading to the second floor were completely engulfed in flames<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The family couldn\u2019t exit from the windows, she said, because the outdoor staircase was on fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fire escalated so fast it was just too much,\u201d she said. \u201cThe wind was playing a big part on this fire. It was horrible.<\/p>\n

The home was largely destroyed by the fire. Christopher Sadowski<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were kids, you know, my kids literally grew up with, but it\u2019s horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sayegh, the mayor, said the family\u2019s passing has left his city in grief.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have three children who woke up yesterday thinking about Halloween, trick or treating, and unfortunately this is how their lives end, in tragic fashion,\u2019 he said. \u201cYou have a father, a mother and three children, children all under the age of 15 years old, and it leaves a community grieving.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A neighbor of the family killed by a Halloween night fire that destroyed their Paterson home is \u201cdevastated\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1015,544,57,1066,9,11,10,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-25897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-deaths","9":"tag-fires","10":"tag-metro","11":"tag-new-jersey","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}