A fire that broke out in a Poughkeepsie home early yesterday morning claimed the lives of two Marist College female students and a male friend. Four other people, two female students who lived in the home and two male students, managed to escape the blaze. The Poughkeepsie Journal reports that town police "said one of the Marist male students who was sleeping upstairs awoke at about 1:30 a.m., determined the doorknob of the bedroom door was hot. The student and the female who was in the room with him jumped out the second-floor window to safety."
The fire was reported at around 1:30 a.m., and the authorities say the survivors went to bed about an hour earlier and didn't know of any issues. According to the AP, "One victim was found on the second floor of the house, one was downstairs and the third was under “considerable collapsed debris,” the police chief said. The four survivors were taken to a hospital, where they were treated and released." A neighbor said that one yelled that her boyfriend had thrown her out of a window. It's believed the fire may have started in the rear of the first floor.
The Fairview Avenue home was a rental, and many of the homes on the street are rented to Marist students, who were back to start the spring semester. The Journal News reports that there are six listed tenants for the home, "Poughkeepsie Supervisor Todd Tancredi said it was unclear whether the owner of the house, identified in county tax records as Kevin Brennan of Hyde Park, may have violated town zoning regulations by renting the home to six students. The zoning law permits up to five unrelated individuals to rent a home in a residential zone, Tancredi said" (but it's possible one of the tenants moved out).
Marist College postponed two basketball games "out of respect for the students affected by this tragedy."
