Amid ruins of South Bend house fire, father recalls memories of six late children

SOUTH BEND — On a cool and sunny morning, David Smith walked among the wreckage of the fire that took his six children.

The rental home on South Bend's near west side where the single father had been raising six kids, the oldest of whom was 11 while the youngest lived for just 17 months, is enclosed by a chain-link fence. The site of 222 N. LaPorte Ave. remains under investigation after a blaze erupted there Jan. 21.

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The six children and their 67-year-old father all moved into the home in October, after coming to South Bend to be closer to Smith's adult daughter and other family. In the moments before flames and smoke consumed the home on a snowy Sunday evening, Smith says, he and all of the kids were lounging in a bedroom, eating snacks and watching movies.

On a recent morning, someone had apparently pried open a section leading to the backyard, a recurrent issue for fire investigators, according to Smith. He says some stuff he'd left behind, including a children's go-kart, seems to have been stolen. That day, what the father saw lured him to walk through the gap.

Near an old grill, he bent down and picked up a pair of dirty black sweatpants. He shook off some of the ash covering them. He said the pants had belonged to his 10-year-old boy, Demetris, the oldest of the five children who died the night of the blaze.

Teachers at Madison STEAM Academy, where Demetris was in fifth grade, knew him for his uncontrollable smile and his joyous dancing with classmates. Smith said the boy was an eager churchgoer and wanted to be baptized. When the family moved into the LaPorte Avenue home in October, Demetris was one of the first to visit St. Paul's Memorial Church just across the street.

Smith wandered across the yard to the spot where he says he landed after jumping down from a second-floor window to escape the smoke and flames. He bent down and grabbed a tiny gray winter coat with pink polka dots and a fuzzy pink liner.

It was the coat he'd wrapped around his 17-month-old baby girl, Faith, whose nickname "Little Mama" captured the big personality inside her small body.

When she wanted her dad's attention, she would toddle over and tug on his pantlegs. If she didn't get her way with her siblings, Smith said, she'd sometimes chase them around the house with a broom or some other whacking device. He said some of Faith's first words, spoken between bursts of laughter, were: "Got 'em."

The father saw memories everywhere in the backyard.

There was 11-year-old Angel, the oldest, the one Smith sat with as doctors pronounced her dead five days after the fire. She was a helper in the classroom as a sixth grader at Navarre Middle School, teachers said, and also at home. She was keen to play sidekick to her dad while cooking and cleaning.

She was also the director of short lip-syncing videos in which she and her siblings starred, posting more than 100 to a YouTube channel.

Angel's main co-star was 9-year-old Davida. When they weren't acting, both girls loved to paint and draw, Smith said. Davida called her art teacher her "school mom." And walking around the hallways at Madison, where she was a third grader, Davida was known to greet almost everyone with a hug.

And there was 5-year-old Deontay, who had begun to make adventurous use of his growing limbs by scaling trees and a shed out back. The youngest boy, 4-year-old D'Angelo, believed his brother the climber, the "jungle boy," to be a superhero. Naturally, he tried to follow Deontay's every move.

Smith said life as a single father kept him from working as much as he'd wanted to. He wanted to make life more comfortable for the kids. But he would stay home and look after the three youngest ones on weekdays while the others were in school.

He said the six children all have the same mother, but she's still in Iowa, where they lived before. He hasn't spoken to her since around the time Faith was born. She ceded full custody of the kids to Smith, he says.

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"Every day is not a picnic," Smith said of being a single father. "I promise you that."

He merely caught glimpses of the two girls when firefighters pulled them out of the home, he said.

Later that night, he identified the five who had been taken to Memorial Hospital. He said a prayer for them and kissed them goodbye.

Five days later, he sat by Angel's side for the last time and prayed for peace.

Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @jordantsmith09

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Who were the six kids killed in South Bend house fire