WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) - A 71-year-old man has died after jumping from the third-floor porch of a Worcester apartment building during a fire last week that also claimed the lives of two relatives, fire officials said.
Woodrow Adams Sr., 71, leaped Friday as crews tried to reach the upper floors, The Telegram & Gazette reported. He died Saturday at a Boston hospital where he was being treated for smoke inhalation and for injuries suffered during the jump.
Firefighters were on the scene but did not know Adams was still in the building until he jumped.
“If we could have saved him, we would have saved him,” Deputy Fire Chief Martin Dyer said Monday.
“We had a ladder up to the third floor looking through the windows,” Dyer said. “We had crews trying to make it into the third floor and we were fighting exterior fire and interior fire in two, three-deckers.”
The other victims were identified by authorities as Edna Mae Williams, 85, and her son, Gerald Prince, 61. They were found inside. Adams Sr. was Williams’ son-in-law.
The home had working fire alarms, but not as many as fire officials would have liked to see, Dyer said.
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