Baby killed in Newton house fire

A fire claimed the life of a 5-month-old infant at a northeast Newton home late Tuesday afternoon, sending ripples through a neighborhood still struggling Tuesday evening to comprehend how such a thing could ever happen.

Authorities Wednesday were investigating the death of Chase Edward Finch, the son of Bonnie Barton and Jason Finch. Authorities received a call for a fire at 926 N. Sixth Ave. E. at 4:28 p.m. Tuesday. When the Newton Fire Department arrived to quell the blaze, they found the infant dead inside with injuries sustained from the fire. Investigation into the case is ongoing.

In the aftermath, witnesses, friends and neighbors gathered around the neighborhood near Emerson Hough Elementary to console each other and recount the details of a tragedy that happened so suddenly it scarcely seemed possible.

Brandon Avila was visiting with his friend Jason Barton in the driveway/garage area at Barton's home at 926 N. Sixth Ave. E. Bonnie Barton, Barton's ex-wife, had just dropped off her son, Chase, for Jason Barton to watch while she made a quick trip to the store.

Avila and other witnesses said the infant was in a car seat and had been placed on the kitchen counter when Jason Barton stepped outside for a few minutes.

Avila recalled talking to Jason Barton near the garage for about five minutes when something caught their eye from inside the kitchen.

“Jason looked up at the window and saw that the blind had fell. We kinda thought the dog had did it or something, and then I saw it had completely fell, and I'm like ‘oh my god.' So Jason bolted toward the door, went inside and when he came back out, the smoke just came rolling out,” Avila said. “He was freaking out, saying, ‘The baby! The baby! The baby! There's fire! The baby's on fire!”'

Barton was screaming for a fire extinguisher and everyone began to panic as thick black smoke appeared, according to Avila.

Neighbor Bryan Dickey had just come home from work when he saw smoke pouring from the neighboring residence. He heard people screaming that a baby was in the house, so he quickly grabbed a garden hose and raced to help the others at the back door. At that point he found the smoke already so thick, he couldn't even enter the home.

“You couldn't see a foot in front of your face,” he said.

The fire department arrived, and Dickey said they asked the people in the area to step away so they could put out the fire and rescue the child. At that point, it already was too late, and authorities found the infant dead inside.

Angel Ward recalled that she had just returned to a nearby friend's home after running an errand when she saw smoke and her friend, Bonnie Barton, the child's mother, screaming outside the home at 926.

“She was flailing all over the place, and her ex-husband was outside,” Ward said. “When I got to her, she was screaming ‘Give me my baby back! Give me my baby back!”'

Ward tried to comfort her friend, who, she said, was inconsolable.

“I was holding her on the ground, we were holding each other on the ground, and I was trying to calm her down, and she still was asking for her baby,” Ward said. “She was so distraught. It was heart-wrenching.”

Ward recalled seeing a distraught Jason Barton burnt and covered with melted plastic as authorities tried to sort out who needed medical treatment.

Police on scene declined to offer any details about the incident, but this morning they did confirm the names of the child, the parents and that there were no other children in the house when the fire started.

Meanwhile neighbors and all those who tried so hard to help are left wondering how in the world something like this could happen, and knowing how deeply it saddens the entire community.

“It's the saddest thing I've ever heard. I feel for both of them,” Ward said, tearing up. “To lose a child is just the worst thing in the world, absolutely the worst thing in the entire world.”