Mother charged in kids' deaths

Girls killed in the fire were 1 and 3 years old.
WARREN -- A former Leavittsburg woman is charged with two counts of endangering children and two counts of negligent homicide in the Nov. 16 fire on McConnell Road that killed two of her children.
De'it Dunkerton, 28, of 862 Union St. S.W., was arraigned on the charges this week in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court. She was released on $10,000 bond and is set for a pretrial hearing Tuesday before Judge Andrew Logan.
The endangering children charges are third-degree felonies, and the negligent homicide charges are first-degree misdemeanors.
The 10 a.m. fire killed 1-year-old Shadale Wright and 3-year-old Au' Zua Wright, who died at the scene. Trumbull County's forensic pathologist, Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk, later ruled the deaths accidental and listed the cause of the deaths as smoke inhalation.
Lt. Don Bishop with the Warren Township Police Department, said he could not comment further on the case.
Witness accounts
Shawn Price, who said he was inside the house when the fire started, told reporters that he and Dunkerton awoke in the bedroom to flames. He said that it looked like the fire might have started around a sheet in the kitchen, and that one of the children might have started it.
He and Dunkerton filled a large pot with water but couldn't put out the flames, he said, and the fire quickly got out of control. He said Dunkerton immediately tried to rescue the girls, but "one of the kids ran to the back" of the house toward the bathroom.
Dunkerton then went outside and into the back yard, near the bathroom, and tried unsuccessfully to rescue them from there, witnesses said. The Cape Cod-style house is near LaBrae's new school complex on North Leavitt Road.
A neighbor said Dunkerton had other children who had gone to school from the house earlier in the morning. Officials said the house had no working smoke detectors.