Sean Kirst: Night of fire haunts family that almost died in apartment arson

Oct. 13--When Brian Murphy was a teenager, hunting on family land in Forestville, he was accidentally shot by another hunter. It was a freak event, Murphy said, a lot of factors going wrong at once, except for one thing that saved his life by going right.

Murphy was holding his own shotgun in exactly the right position so that the slug struck the butt of the gun, changing the impact just enough before the blast hit the femoral artery in his thigh.

The wound was bad, but not as bad as it would have been. Murphy's companions had time to get him to a hospital.

Without that stock, the doctors told him, he would have bled out and died.

Murphy is now a firefighter in Lackawanna. He keeps that damaged stock on a bedroom dresser. It is a symbol of perspective, of the fragile barrier that separates life from death, at any unexpected moment.

He witnessed it again in April of last year, as he searched for a mother and child on the smoke-filled second floor of a burning apartment house on Ingham Avenue.

***

The last few weeks, for Khaled Soliman, keep bringing him back in memory to those same rooms. The images are coupled with the aftermath of a shattered leg and fractured spine, injuries that still force him, much of the time, to use a wheelchair.

Khaled, 29, remains stunned that Corey Green, 20, accused by a grand jury of putting lives at risk when he set that fire, was convicted at trial of a lesser felony classified under state law as "nonviolent."

Last week, state Supreme Court Justice Christopher Burns sentenced Green to five to 15 years. With time served, Green will be eligible for parole in just over four years.

"He could get off then as a nonviolent offender," said Khaled, a native of Egypt, "even with the scars still on my children."

The defense asserted Green did not know the house was occupied, a contention Khaled said makes no sense. He works in digital marketing. He believes his family would be dead if he had not decided by chance to stay up on a Saturday morning in 2017, catching up on work in the hours before dawn.

He heard a noise from the downstairs stairwell and then a splashing sound, but said he did not immediately react. He assumed another tenant was cleaning, which was not unusual.

"Who would think that here in America," he said, "someone would try to burn your family to death?"

From the entrance, Khaled heard "a big boom, like an explosion." He pulled open the apartment door and was hit by "a huge wave of smoke." The heat was intense enough to melt the ends of his long hair and to blacken his lips.

He screamed "Fire!" to the neighbors, then slammed the door and ran to his wife, Claudia, still asleep in bed.

Khaled woke her, and she reached out for their baby, Tasneem. As smoke poured into the apartment, Khaled hurried to the room where his 3-year-old son, Zaid, and 5-year-old daughter, Zainab, were asleep.

They all gathered there, but Khaled feared it was too dark to hope for a rescue. He led his family to a living room window, above the driveway. Already, there was too much smoke for Khaled to see Claudia. He called to her, hoping they could stay near the window until firefighters arrived to raise a ladder, and get them out.

The smoke was suffocating. Khaled saw only one chance: He and Claudia would need to hang from the window, each holding one child. He threw his body outside while he gripped the frame, calling to his wife to hand him the children. He managed to take Zainab in one arm and dangled by the other, the aluminum ridge of the window frame slicing his hand.

Khaled shouted for his wife to hand him Zaib, but she had disappeared in the smoke. The last thing he saw was the little boy at the window, hopeless expression on his face as he breathed in smoke, until the weight became too much and Khaled lost his grip.

He fell to the pavement, smashing his foot so hard that a bone tore through his skin. While he tried to shield his daughter with his body, Zanaib cut her face on broken glass as they rolled. Khaled saw blood on her face and said:

"Please don't die."

Terrified about his wife, son and baby, he kept trying to stand. Each time, he fell down.

Looking up, he saw dark smoke pouring from the window.

***

Murphy was in a light sleep at Station Two, on Abbott Road, when the radio snapped into action, a voice talking about people trapped in a house fire on Ingham. Minutes later, as firefighters arrived, "it was chaos," Murphy said, with 20 people or so trying to find their way to safety.

Some were standing on a second-story roof, awaiting rescue. A guy with bad cuts on his arms ran over, seeking help, and Murphy routed him to emergency crews on the scene.

Murphy was the second man into the stairwell, working the nozzle on a hose line, knocking down flames that surged from the steps. At the landing, a group of firefighters paused for an instant. Two of them, Nicolai Roussev and Lt. Gene Olivieri, turned to the right.

Murphy, joined by firefighter Nick Kasprzak, went left, toward a back apartment. The smoke was blinding. Kasprzak carried a digital imager, a device that can pick out silhouettes in the haze.

Moments later, it would save two lives.

"We couldn't see anything," Murphy said.

The two men had known each other since they were teenagers, working together as lifeguards. Kasprzak, staring at the screen, gave spoken directions that allowed them to dodge unseen furniture and make their way into the apartment, where the screen revealed the form of a woman on the floor.

Murphy, on hands and knees, went toward her, in a foot or two of space near the floor, beneath the wall of smoke. They would learn later that Claudia Choro Soliman had managed to drop her infant to a neighbor, from the window, before smoke overwhelmed her. She showed no signs of life. Murphy and Kasprzak knew they had seconds, at best, to get her out.

Even as Murphy began lifting Claudia, Kasprzak saw a second form on the screen, the image of 3-year-old Zaid, a few feet away. He found the child on the ground, eyes still open.

"We're out of here, bud," Kasprzak said, turning toward the door. Murphy followed, doing his best to carry Claudia, until firefighter Ray Janczak stepped in to offer a hand at the landing.

They carried her downstairs and to the pavement. Murphy provided Claudia with a couple of fierce chest compressions before a crew from AMR Medical Transportation took over.

Eleven firefighters eventually received medals for heroism. On the day of the presentation, Murphy and Kasprzak had a chance to meet the children, to watch as Zaid and his siblings played on a fire truck. As for Claudia, she was not strong enough to go. Her family quietly explained that she was suffering.

That left Murphy to think about Kasprzak offering directions in the smoke, about the figure that emerged on the screen, about their fear that they lacked the time to get Claudia out.

For the second time, Murphy learned the lesson of the shotgun stock.

***

Khaled Soliman can walk short distances, but not without great pain. His children have recovered physically, though his daughter has marks on her face from the lacerations.

It is Claudia that Khaled worries about the most. She has chronic breathing problems, and the doctors say her lungs may be scarred. Khaled said his Claudia is hit by waves of anxiety and terror. His children still fear the chance of a fire in the night, and it took Claudia a long time before she would leave their bedside, while they slept.

Khaled said his family is traumatized in ways that are difficult to heal, which magnifies his frustration about the sentence imposed on Green. A grand jury originally handed down four counts of first-degree arson. They are equivalent, in severity of sentencing, to murder.

Yet jurors decided there was not enough evidence to prove Green knew the house was occupied.

Khaled cannot fathom that argument. While no motive was clearly established, one police investigator testified that Green made a harsh and disparaging remark about fire injuries endured by "Arabs."

Khaled said that there were cars in the driveway, near the entrance to the apartment house. He said there was a stroller and many shoes in the stairwell where the flames began.

He does not believe anyone approaching his home that night could have doubted that people were most probably inside. He worries that courtroom mentions of his family's Muslim faith -- many immigrant families lived in the apartment house, owned by the Lackawanna Islamic Mosque -- may have somehow influenced the verdict.

In bed at night, he cannot shake off the image of his son's face in the smoke, seconds before Khaled fell to the ground. He recalls the helplessness as he tried to climb to his feet. He remembers the painful vigil at the hospital, unsure whether his wife -- who had been intubated -- would survive the ordeal.

He is thankful beyond words, he said, for the way law enforcement agencies pursued and prosecuted Green, and for the way Murphy, Kasprzak and other firefighters put their lives on the line.

"What they did, what they ran into," Khaled said, "those guys are amazing."

They saved his family. He does not know if even time will mend the scars.

Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Buffalo News. Email him at [email protected], or read more of his work in this archive.

___

(c)2018 The Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.)

Visit The Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.) at www.buffalonews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.