Girl, 5, Dies in Apartment Fire

A 5-year-old girl died in an apartment fire in southeast San Diego on Thursday evening, a Fire Department spokesman said.

The victim, Nunce Enriques, was apparently playing with matches when the fire started about 5 p.m. in a second-floor unit of a two-story apartment building in the 1500 block of South 38th Street, Battalion Chief John Hale said. There was no smoke detector in the apartment, he added.

Four other people in the apartment--a man, a woman, and two other girls, ages 2 and 5--escaped without injury, Hale said. The survivors’ relationship to the victim was not known. Firefighters rescued another woman and a young boy from an adjacent second-floor apartment.

Hale said the four survivors were in a bedroom with the door closed while the victim was playing by herself in the living room. By the time the occupants smelled smoke and opened the door the living room was engulfed in flames and their access to the front door was blocked, said. The four survivors escaped through a bedroom window.

A firefighter, who suffered second- and third-degree burns to his neck, shoulder and ears, was treated at the scene, Hale said.