A five-year-old boy died despite efforts by his family and neighbours to rescue him from a fire in their two-storey house in Cork city yesterday morning.
Daniel Purcell is believed to have suffocated after being overcome by smoke when fire broke out in an upstairs bedroom at 8.45 a.m. Ms Elizabeth Purcell managed to get her children Leanne (7) and Jamie (2) downstairs as smoke and flames engulfed the upstairs of the house.
She kicked out a window in a back bedroom and threw her other son, Shane to a neighbour, but Daniel had gone under a bed to avoid the flames. Ms Purcell broke her leg in three places jumping from an upstairs window.