Missouri Mom 'Responsible' In Apartment Fire That Killed All Her 5 Children

Officials charged a Missouri mother earlier this week in connection with the deaths of her five children in an apartment fire in August.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch said Sabrina Dunigan, 34, faces five counts of endangering the life or health of a child, which is a felony crime.

The fire at Dunigan's East St. Louis home on August 6 killed her five children: Loy-el Dunigan, Jabari Johnson, Deontae Davis, and twins Heaven and Neveah Dunigan. All of the children were under the age of ten.

According to Crime Online, the fire broke out around 3 a.m. on the second floor of the apartment building at 29th Street in East St. Louis when Dunigan picked up her partner from work.

Court filings said the Missouri mother allegedly left her five children alone. According to the documents, the mother placed the children in circumstances that jeopardized their life and health.

A court set her bond at $75,000. As of Thursday, officials did not place her in custody. There are pending grand jury actions in the case, according to online court documents.

The landlord, Rudy Mcintosh, told FOX 2 on Thursday that Sabrina Dunigan said she left a candle burning and the kids set the unit on fire.

"I don't know what she told the investigators, but... that's what she said to me," said Mcintosh, a retired officer of the East St. Louis Police Department.

The East St. Louis Fire Chief, on the other hand, could not establish whether a candle had been left burning. No reports on the cause of the fire will be made public until the case is prosecuted.

Five felonies have been levied against the Missouri mother. Each felony count is said to carry a sentence of two to ten years in jail.

Greg Dunigan, Sabrina Dunigan's father, and his wife were reportedly home when the flat caught fire. After everything she had lost, Greg told the Post-Dispatch that he couldn't believe officials would charge her daughter with a felony.

"Why are they trying to do this to [Sabrina Dunigan]?" Greg Dunigan said. He added that his daughter lost all she could lose already.

"Why do they want to take the rest away, meaning herself? She don't have anything left," Dunigan's father told the outlet. Greg also said he and his wife were supposed to be watching the kids. But they fell asleep.

The eight-person family was said to be sharing a one-bedroom flat. Greg and his wife, on the other hand, were in a different area of the house, at the back.

The couple is said to have fled the fire by jumping from the second-floor window of their flat without their children.

It was an electrical fire, according to the Missouri mother and father. They also claimed there were no smoke detectors in the flat. The landlord, on the other hand, refuted their assertions, claiming that smoke detectors were installed in all of his buildings.