8-year-old dies after Weakley County house fire

WEAKLEY COUNTY, Tenn. — Just two years after a seven-year-old boy was struck by lightning and killed, tragedy has again struck the same family.

“The family… it was an Amish community, and they didn’t have a cell phone. The neighbor is the one that called it in,” said McKenzie Fire Department Battalion Chief Jason Arnold.

At 11:04 p.m. Wednesday night, three fire departments received an emergency call. Responders arrived at the 1200 block of Blaylock Store Road to a house engulfed in flames.

Seven family members escaped the house fire, and one with injuries was taken by an ambulance.

“Our first plan of action was to take care of the patient,” Arnold said. “EMS arrived shortly, I mean within minutes of us getting there, and they took over with the patient, then we started putting more of our efforts to fight the fire.”

The patient, an eight-year-old boy, was taken to the hospital where he later died. The name of the child has not been announced at this time.

“We had to bring a trackhoe in to get the sheet metal that was on the house,” Arnold said. “We had to pull all of it off in order to get to the fire that was in the basement and extinguish that.”

Arnold says it took at least two hours to get the fire under control, and they are still looking into how the fire was started.

“We’re thinking it started in the middle of the house, according to the family members that were there at the time,” Arnold said.

The house was a total loss.

Thursday, the family and members of the Amish community are cleaning up what is left of the house.