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Five other children and a woman escaped, but smoke prevented the day-care operator from returning to the home to rescue the child, said Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.
The fire started in the basement of Porter's Playhouse and spread quickly, he said.
Firefighters found the boy under some clothing in a first-floor closet. Jerome Shelton, another department spokesman, said it is common for small children to try to hide from fires when they're scared.
Neighbor Georgia Randle said she was driving by and stopped to help a woman she saw hurrying children out of the burning home.
She and the woman tried to find the last child, but the heat and smoke stopped them and she had to pull the other woman out, Randle said.
"It felt like I was trying to get to one of my own children," Randle said.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services cited the home for three licensing violations in November, including a lack of working smoke detectors, said Kendall Marlowe, spokesman for the agency in Chicago.
But Marlowe said the fire department confirmed there were working smoke detectors in the home.
[Associated
Press]
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