Father, Thawing Pipes, Started Detroit Blaze That Killed 7 Kids

DETROIT - Leroy Lyons put a flame to the rolled-up newspaper in his hand, determined to thaw the frozen water pipes beneath his house.

He did not know he was starting a fire that later Wednesday would kill his seven children, trapped alone, frantically seeking escape through windows that were barred or blocked, police said.

Lyons was squeezed into a 30-inch-high space where the pipes hid just beneath the kitchen floor. To the cold metal, he held the blazing papers. When one burned out, he lit another.

Two men from the neighborhood drove up, saw what he was doing and got his attention. One of the men had given Lyons money for drugs, police were told, but he never delivered.

Lyons, 38, and his girlfriend, Shereese Williams, 35, then left with the men to make up the debt, leaving their kids behind, police said.

About 1 p.m., they left together, the driver dropping them off near Jefferson Avenue. They agreed to be picked up at 3.

But an hour later, the driver rushed back, saying he had smelled smoke on their street and saw the house ablaze.

They sped back to the house. Lyons and Williams jumped out, each screaming at firefighters, "Where are my children? Where are my children?"

They were too late. La Wanda, 9; Nikia, 7; Dakwan, 6; Laquinten, 4; Venus, 2; Anthony, 7 months, and Mark Brayboy, 2, were dead.

The preceding account of the tragedy emerged yesterday in homicide-detectives' interviews with witnesses. Arson investigators ruled the blaze an accident.

"What he was doing, and it's very common in the city, he made torches out of rolled-up newspapers," said Capt. Jon Bozich. "He'd light it, hold it to the pipe . . . and do the same with another one and another one until he got the job done. . . . It's probably going on all over the city of Detroit."

Police plan to charge Lyons and Williams, and possibly Crystal Brayboy, 26, the mother of 2-year-old Mark who was left at the house.

Both Lyons and Williams remained in police custody yesterday.

Williams at first told police that she had gone grocery shopping and that she left her children with a baby sitter. But late Wednesday, police said, Williams recanted the story.

Brayboy is wanted on an armed-robbery charge for allegedly striking a 69-year-old wheelchair-bound Detroit man in the head with a claw hammer. Police said they were aware of that charge when they questioned her about the fire Wednesday night, but chose not to arrest her then because her son had died.

Possible charges related to the fire deaths include second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and child abuse.

In two precedent-setting Michigan cases, in 1966 and 1982, mothers were convicted of involuntary manslaughter when young children they left home alone died in fires.

The medical-examiner's office ruled yesterday that Wednesday's deaths were homicides, and a police investigator who requested anonymity said "charges will definitely be requested" from the prosecutor's office.

In her apartment yesterday, Eunice Brayboy, the grandmother of Mark, demanded that all the parents be charged with murder, including her own daughter, Crystal Brayboy.

She said it was not the first time the children were left home alone.

Last July, she said, she went to the house to fetch her grandson. One of the other children answered the door and told her that his parents "went to the drug house," she said.

Police said Lyons used heroin. Eunice Brayboy said her daughter smoked crack and often drifted in and out of the family. Crystal Brayboy could not be reached.

Margaret Anzinger, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services, said she knew of no recent referrals or contacts regarding Williams' children. There were no records of complaints involving Williams in Wayne County Juvenile Court.

Crystal Brayboy has a record of child abuse and neglect dating to 1987, according to Juvenile Court records.