An 11-year-old autis­tic girl, who was re­port­ed­ly left alone at home on Wednes­day night, died at hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing burnt about the body dur­ing a house fire. Po­lice said An­na Love-Taitt, of Paul Castil­lo Av­enue, Phase Four, Mal­abar, Ari­ma, lived with a close male rel­a­tive, aged 50, and an­oth­er man in the qui­et neigh­bour­hood.

Res­i­dents of the area did not know how the sec­ond man was re­lat­ed to the child. While the cause of the fire re­mained un­known, fire of­fi­cers re­turned to the scene yes­ter­day morn­ing, sift­ing through the rub­ble in the burnt bed­room in a bid to as­cer­tain how the blaze be­gan.

An­na’s bed­room was lo­cat­ed at the back of the house, where the most dam­age ap­peared to be.

Res­i­dents liv­ing close by peered out cu­ri­ous­ly as of­fi­cers by­passed the yel­low cau­tion tape that stretched across the wrought-iron gate, which had re­mained open. Neigh­bours ex­pressed sym­pa­thy for the man­ner in which the girl’s life end­ed. Still vis­i­bly shak­en as he re­called his ef­forts to help res­cue the 11-year-old girl, a res­i­dent who re­quest­ed his name not be pub­lished re­count­ed how the sit­u­a­tion un­fold­ed.

He said a man who was liv­ing in the house first alert­ed him and an­oth­er neigh­bour that a fire had bro­ken out around 7.45 pm Wednes­day. “He asked us if we could as­sist him in his house be­cause the house was on fire and one of the rooms was on fire, and he doesn’t want to go in alone be­cause he didn’t want to look sus­pi­cious,” he said.

The res­i­dent said they im­me­di­ate­ly sprung in­to ac­tion. “So we as­sist­ed him. We got in­side the premis­es and walked past the gallery, past the liv­ing room, and then we saw smoke.” The neigh­bour said when they came to a door to the back of the house, “There were flames com­ing from un­der­neath the door, and they were ver­ti­cal and go­ing up ... and I came out of the res­i­dence to look for any pipe that has a hose to try and soak down what we could to out the fire and saw none. So I ran to my house and got two hoses and tried to con­nect, but the pipe had no wa­ter.”

He said he tried to re-en­ter, but the flames were too much. Fire of­fi­cers were con­tact­ed and ar­rived a short while lat­er. How­ev­er, he said the sit­u­a­tion was “grim”.

The girl was tak­en out of the room by fire of­fi­cers and tak­en to hos­pi­tal where she suc­cumbed to her in­juries. She sus­tained third-de­gree burns about the body. He said while he did not know An­na well, he used to hear her singing in the morn­ing.

An­oth­er neigh­bour, who asked not to be named, would al­so hear the 11-year-old belt­ing out a tune. “She is kin­da men­tal­ly chal­lenged ... I dun­no what re­al­ly wrong but I used to see her around the house, singing.”

He said he would miss hear­ing her dai­ly. The neigh­bour said An­na’s close male rel­a­tive usu­al­ly kept to him­self. A teacher, who said An­na at­tend­ed the day­care where she worked for a year and a half be­fore she turned three, said she was mourn­ing the loss of the “sweet soul.”

The teacher said An­na’s moth­er died dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and con­cerns grew for the wel­fare of the spe­cial needs child. It was not clear if she had been at­tend­ing school.

The teacher claimed she reached out to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty to com­plain about the sit­u­a­tion years ago. How­ev­er, she claimed she failed to fol­low up with the au­thor­i­ty. In­ves­ti­ga­tors yes­ter­day said the male rel­a­tive had been ques­tioned and re­leased as en­quiries con­tin­ue.