14 DAY TRIAL // 5 members of an eastern Kentucky family perished in a house fire on Wednesday night, January 9. A father and four children lost their lives in the flames.
Kentucky.com relays the names of the 5 victims: father Billy Wilfong and 5-year-old Dakota, 4-year-old Tyler, 2-year-old Cheyenne and baby Emily, only 6 months old.
Coroner Russell Roberts hasn't released a final ID on the victims, since the bodies were too heavily burnt to be properly identified. The state medical examiner's office is conducting tests to confirm the result.
All 5 victims of the fire were found in the living room of their family house, reports from first responders say. The fire in Jonancy has been described as the worst registered in Pike County in history.
The children's mother, 29-year-old Tammie Tucker, survived the accident. She was transported to University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, where she is being treated for serious injuries.
"The father and the four kids were in the same room. Evidently, they had been sleeping on pallets on the floor, probably in one room to stay warm. [...] It looks like the dad had the baby in his arms, trying to get out with it," the coroner assessed.
The residence was completely engulfed in flames. The family had been living there for four years. According to neighbors' accounts, the fire broke out at around 2:30 a.m.
Mother Tammie reached out to her father James Tucker, who lived in a mobile home nearby. "Help me, Daddy! Help me!" she said as she came up to his trailer.
"I looked out the window and saw the whole house lit up," he describes.
"Tragedies like this, it gets to where it does bother you. Any time you lose children in a house fire like this, it gets emotional," Roberts adds.