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'They just kept coming' | Neighbors describe fire crew response to fatal Sumter house fire that killed an infant, injured four others

About 25 firefighters from Sumter Fire and Kershaw Fire responded to the mobile home on Black River Road around 6:20 a.m. on Friday, officials say.

SUMTER, S.C. — A baby is dead, and four people were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries after a fire on Friday morning in Sumter County.

The Sumter Fire Department said it responded to the 8800 block of Black River Road around 6:20 a.m. after a mobile home fire.

“It was black, black smoke,” neighbor Alberta Allen said after witnessing the fire from her porch. “I heard the booming noise, and I thought that was an earthquake. So I got up and I sat on the bed and then after a while I heard the siren, the fire trucks and then that's when I got up and I went to the door I said, ‘Oh my God, it’s a fire.”

Dennis Bostic lives just down the road, about half a mile away.

“I heard just a plethora of, you know, ambulances and fire trucks and police cars nonstop just flying down the road, and it woke me up,” Bostic said. “I mean it, they just kept coming. They just kept coming. It was like, it was like it wasn't going to stop.”

“We ended up with about 25 firefighters on scene,” Sumter Fire Division Chief Jeffrey Shirley said about the joint response from Sumter Fire and Kershaw Fire. “We’ve worked with Kershaw in the past, and they’ve worked with us, and being in that tri-county area ‘cuz Lee County kind of ties in there as well, we have mutual aid, and we work very well together with the Rembert and the outlying Kershaw area. They normally respond together in that wedge, so it was nothing new to us, so we work well with those guys.”

Shirley said four people were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, but unfortunately, the Sumter County Coroner confirmed that 7-month-old Oaklenn Wooten died. An autopsy is scheduled for Monday at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

“It’s never easy,” Shirley said. “It affects everyone differently, but this career is inherently dangerous, and unfortunately, it comes with the territory. But our folks train hard every day, both agencies, and they train hard every day to try to be better at what they do for any given call.”

It’s news that neighbor Joseph Alston said is hard to hear.

“I hope they’ll be alright, you know, and I’ll be praying that they’re alright,” Alston said. “And I feel for them, for their baby.”

A different neighbor shared that the four people living in the house were the baby’s parents and grandparents.

Fire officials haven't released the fire's cause yet, but the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) is investigating.

"The investigative agency normally typically starts with your local authorities and then, based on the nature of the incident, is where the outside agencies are involved, and in this particular case, SLED was asked to come in," Shirley said.

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