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Four dead in fire in apartment building

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A St. Louis mother has been hit with charges related to the death of her five children. Sabrina Dunigan has been charged with five counts of endangering the life or health of a child after her children died in an apartment fire while she wasn’t home, the St. Louis Dispatch reported.

Dunigan had left her apartment around 3 a.m on Aug. 6, which was her birthday, to pick her boyfriend up from work. Her five children, who were all under the age of 10, were left in the home and were supposed to being watched by Dunigan’s father, Greg, and his wife. When Dunigan returned, her apartment was ablaze and she tried to save her children- nine-year-old Deontae Davis, eight-year-old twin girls Heaven and Neveah Dunigan, four-year-old Jabari Johnson and two-year-old Loy-el Dunigan – but was unsuccessful. Greg Dunigan said that he and his wife had fell asleep and when they woke up to the apartment fire and that they jumped from the second floor without the children to escape. The Dunigans believe that it was an electrical fire.

Greg Vespa, an investigator with the state fire marshal’s office, wrote in charging documents that Sabrina Dunigan “knowingly caused or permitted a child to be placed in circumstances that endangered the child’s life or health” when she left them in the home.

Greg Dunigan feels that his daughter facing these charges after suffering such terrible losses is unfair.

“Why are they trying to do this to her?” he told the Post-Dispatch. “She done lost all she can lose already. Why they want to take the rest away, meaning herself? She don’t have nothing left.”

Each count of endangering the life or health of a child, which is a felony, carries a sentence of two to 10 years each.

The children had their funeral on Aug. 21, 2021 at the Greater St. Mark Church of God in Christ in St. Louis.

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