Fire officials believe that an early Saturday morning fire that gutted a Staten Island home, killing two brothers, was suspicious: The Staten Island Advance reports, according to police and fire officials on the scene, "An accelerant appeared to have been used on the wood building's front porch." The blaze grew to five alarms and damaged other homes on Jewett Avenue. The Advance has a slideshow of the devastation.
The victims were Sha-Ron Gutter, 24, and Seandale Gutter, 27, who lived with their parents, Lula Johnson-Gutter and Howard Gutter Jr. The brothers were in the second floor bedroom. One witness said, "The whole front of that house from the ground up was in flames. From the floor to the roof was just a fireball.” The NY Times reports that some people driving by got out of their vehicle and screamed for neighbors to get out, pounding on their doors. Those people were sanitation workers, one of whom told WCBS 2, "I was getting ready to kick the door in, and then the whole front of the house just exploded. The windows blew out. The flames went up and knocked the telephone wires into the tree, and that started a (second) fire."
Brothers Sha-Ron Gutter (left) and Seandale Gutter
Sha-Ron Gutter was a star football player at Staten Island High School (named the Daily News's Player of the Year in 2002); the News says he had a new job as a corrections officer. Seandale Gutter was released from prison last month, after serving a three-year sentence for weapons possession. He had reportedly been hospitalized after being shot in the leg recently, but the Advance reports he had just received his GED and was attending church.
When the fire started, Johnson-Gutterson was on her way to work in Queens (she's an NYPD traffic enforcement agent) and Gutter Jr. was at his job with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Johnson-Gutter wept, "They were my everything. They were my heart. My sons were good boys. They were very close with each other and died together."
