SODUS TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — The Berrien County Prosecutor’s Office says it will not file criminal charges in a July 2018 motel fire that killed a mother and her five children.
Kiarre Curtis, 26, was staying in a second-floor room at the Cosmo Extended Stay Inn when fire swept through the motel near St. Joseph around 1:45 a.m. on July 28, 2018. Kiarre Curtis died along with five of her children: 2-year-old Avery Curtis, 4-year-old Savod Curtis, 5-year-old Samuel Curtis, 7-year-old Gerome Randolph and 10-year-old Marquise Thompson.
Authorities say officers contacted the person inside the burning motel room and then started alerting other tenants to evacuate. However, the thick smoke prevented officers from traveling the inside hallway of the first floor and forced two Berrien County deputies and a Michigan State Police trooper from the second-floor hallway.
Once outside the building, the officers rescued 36-year-old Samuel Curtis and his 1-year-old daughter, Autumn, from a second-story balcony.
Samuel Curtis told the officers the rest of his family tried to escape via the smoke-filled interior hallway. Firefighters discovered the mother and five children in the second-floor hallway or stairway heading to the first floor and tried to revive them at the scene and at the hospital, but they died from smoke inhalation.
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