APARTMENT DWELLER FACES ARSON CHARGE 16 of 200 articles found. Published: May 12, 1999 in LOCAL section, page B5 Length: 490 words Source: CINDY CLAYTON, STAFF WRITER Story sample: Fire investigators said a woman was charged with arson after setting her boyfriend's bed on fire while he slept early Tuesday morning. The fire led to a blaze that destroyed their Ocean View apartment building. The woman, identified as Pamela Barrett, was rescued by firefighters from Ladder 13 who found her lying on the floor of the burning bedroom inside the Phillips Avenue apartment. She was sent to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation, said fire officials." There was more to the newspaper account. But I no longer have credit cards, and so cannot access the newspaper articles that ran in the aftermath. At the time, and for weeks later, I was rarely truly coherent, and wasn't thinking of the media...only of my lost ones. And of Kipling, who came down with pneumonia from his smoke inhalation, and was treated by a very kindly veterinarian in Great Bridge, Chesapeake, without charge, which is all that saved Kipling, because I was destitute, in every way. A thousand blessings on that doctor for sparing me the loss of Kipling as well, and he of his life. I was fortunate enough to only cough up black tar for a few weeks. We were both fortunate to have survived this horrific event, in retrospect, though at the time and for a good year after, I wished I had just stayed in there with them. Maybe then, someone would have come to get all of us. As it was, Pamela had originally escaped the fire, with no trouble. Then when she saw me screaming hysterically and when she saw the police arrive, she turned around and ran back in to make it seem she had been trying only to kill herself. The result of this, of course, was that no one tried to rescue my five. No one even opened the unlocked door at the top of the stairs. Instead, all efforts were concentrated on saving HER, inside her fully involved apartment, while my little ones perished alone and I frantically begged the firefighters to, running to each, or at least, give me a mask and tank so I could. But....they would not let me risk my own neck for those of five precious individuals who were vastly more important to me than than my own. They were my beloved children....for a decade. I would have laid down my life to get them out of there, a hundred times over. What I don't have can be found and verified at: The Virginian Pilot Archives *eMail*