A fire at an East Columbus apartment complex claimed the life of an 11-year-old girl this morning.
Lowndes County Coroner Greg Merchant identified the victim as Oranjula Shanklin. Her body was discovered in the downstairs living room area of a two-story Jamestown Square townhouse where she lived with her mother and two siblings. Shanklin was a sixth grader at Columbus Middle School.
Her mother, brother and sister managed to escape the home, according to Columbus Fire & Rescue spokesman Anthony Colom.
Their apartment, No. 21, sustained the brunt of the fire’s damage.
A mother and her teenage son who lived in No. 22 were also injured. The son was airlifted to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis. His mother was airlifted to a Jackson hospital, according to Merchant.
A total of seven families were affected, Colom said. Four apartment buildings — numbers 19, 20, 21 and 22 — sustained damage.
Columbus Fire & Rescue received a call about the blaze at approximately 2 a.m., according to Colom. Responders contained the fire quickly, Colom said, but it had already destroyed four of the apartments that stand near the intersection of Forrest Boulevard and Maple Street. Neighbors told The Dispatch this morning that apartment No. 21 completely burned within 15 minutes.
“We don’t know how it started but it was awful,” Teressa Ross, a Jamestown Square resident, said. “I’d say in probably 10 to 15 minutes it was over. Every time they thought they got it out, it would blaze back up.”
Ross said her sister, Sherry Howard, first saw the blaze. The two ran outside to knock on doors and wake neighbors.
“She was like, ‘The people’s house is on fire!’ So that’s when we started running, waking everybody up, yelling that it’s a fire,” Ross said.
Shanklin’s mother came out of the front door, yelling for her child still inside, Ross said.
“She came out screaming,” she said. “Once they opened the door, it’s like the flames came on out behind them. She kept saying, ‘My baby’s in there, my baby’s in there.’ But we couldn’t go back in and get her.”
Nicole Evans lives in No. 14 at Jamestown Square. The scene was chaos as everyone tried to get Oranjula Shanklin out of the burning building.
“We were running and hollering and couldn’t do nothing,” Evans said. “We couldn’t do nothing.”
Ross and her sister tried to wake the family in No. 22 but no one came to the door. Then, when the Columbus Police Department arrived, they knocked again and were able to wake the mother and son, Ross said.
The state fire marshal was on scene this morning, but the cause of the fire has not yet been determined, Colom said.
Nineteen firefighters from all five CFR stations responded to the incident, according to Colom.
Dispatch reporter Nathan Gregory contributed to this report.
Sarah Fowler covered crime, education and community related events for The Dispatch.
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