Fire investigators are still searching for clues for what caused an early morning fire on Clay Street Saturday that killed two children and two adults and injured five other people.
Two children were listed in critical condition and a third in serious condition Saturday evening, while two women were treated and released for smoke inhalation, according to fire and hospital officials.
As a steady rain poured down on a makeshift memorial of stuffed animals, a belt buckle with one of the victims' initials and a snack-pack pudding container, neighbors said they were still trying to make sense of the tragedy.
"They were all real good people," said David Euin after leaving a photo of the adult male victim he called his best friend. "They didn't deserve this."
Heat and flames thwarted neighbors' attempts to rescue the victims from the two-story home at 1249 S. Clay St.
Next-door neighbor Darnellius Edwards said he grabbed a garden hose and began spraying the house with water before firefighters arrived around 1:40 a.m.
"When I got there it was already fully engulfed," he said. "There were flames coming out the door."
Gloria Griffin, who lives two doors down, said her two adult sons rushed to the burning house when they heard the sound of breaking glass. But, she said, the flames and heat turned them away.
"It was just too much," she said. "They couldn't get in."
Rescue units pulled eight people from the house during the blaze, including five children, said Sgt. Salvador Melendez, a spokesman for Louisville Fire & Rescue. He said most of the victims were in the first-floor living room, where the fire started, or bedrooms. Only one of those taken from the house, a child, was conscious.
The body of a ninth person, an adult male, was removed after the fire was contained.
The four people killed included:
*Amarion Seargent, 5, who was pronounced dead at 2:24 a.m. at Kosair Children's Hospital. Amarion, who lived at the residence where the fire occurred, died of soot and smoke inhalation, said Jim Wesley, deputy coroner for Jefferson County.
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