The mother and five children who escaped a fire in their Forest Park rental home continue to heal, a family member said late Monday. But the family still wants to know why Brandon Gamble, a husband and father, was unable to make it out alive.
“We still don’t know yet what kept him inside,” Ty’Shay Knox, Gamble’s niece, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Early Thursday, Gamble, 30, and his wife awoke to the smell of smoke in the two-bedroom home. When Gamble opened the bedroom door, he saw flames and urged his wife to break a window to get out of the home, family members said. Gamble then yelled for the children, ages 6 to 13, to wake up and escape through a window.
Knox said one of the older children has described the horrific moments when she last saw her father.
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
“All we know is that her father was in the hallway screaming, telling them to get out,” Knox said. “All she could see was he fell in the hallway. She heard him say, ‘Go ahead and go.’”
Gamble was likely burned and overcome by the smoke, his family said. But he never stopped urging his five children to help each other out a broken window. Gamble was later found dead in the hallway of the home, according to the Forest Park fire department.
The children were treated and released the same day from Southern Regional Medical Center. Their mother, Tyeisha, spent three days at Grady Memorial Hospital, where she was treated for smoke inhalation and glass in her eyes, her family said.
Tyeisha and Brandon had been sweethearts since the sixth grade, and he was a husband and father who always put his family first.
“My husband was a gift from God to me and my kids,” Tyeisha Gamble told Channel 2 Action News.
She urged her husband to get out of the burning house, but he refused.
“And he said no, he was going to save his kids,” Tyeisha Gamble said. “He said he wanted to get his kids out the house. ... My husband went through that fire and he sacrificed his life for his kids.”
Although the cause of the fire has not been determined, Gamble said she suspects faulty wiring. She told Channel 2 that she and her husband had complained to the landlord, but the home’s owner said he had not been told of any problems since the family began renting in November.
A Go Fund Me page was created to assist the Gamble family. Funeral arrangements were pending.
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