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Nov 12, 2009 2:58 pm US/Central
Dallas Attorney, Husband & Child Killed In Fire
Compiled From Staff Reports
DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
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Romina Mulloy and her family died in a house fire on November 12, 2009.
Baker Botts
Flames broke out around midnight at a house in the 9200 block of Windy Crest Drive, just off Greenville Avenue. After knocking down the fire rescuers discovered attorney Romina Mulloy-Levine, her husband Michael Levine, and their five-year-old son Ariel in an upstairs bedroom.
Fire officials at the scene said it appeared the family was trying to escape the flames. Rescuers immediately began performing CPR on the front lawn, but all three died.
Thursday afternoon family members went to the scene to search through what's left of the house, to try and salvage any pictures or personal items. Mulloy-Levine's uncle, Denny Mulloy, said, "I thought it was a fire. You go and you see charred stuff. That was an inferno."
Friends of colleagues of Romina Mulloy-Levine say they're devastated. Mulloy-Levine worked as a bankruptcy attorney at the law firm of Baker & Botts, in downtown Dallas.
The Senior Associate in the law firm's bankruptcy division, Jack Kinzie, said "She was one of those people who touched everyone she knew."
Kinzie went on the say, "The thing that made Romina special was not that she a terrific lawyer, which she was, she was [also] our number one volunteer."
Mulloy-Levine led a team of lawyers and staffers who donated their time at Julius Dorsey Elementary School. The team mentored students, tutored, read to them and collected gifts for the children at Christmastime.
Little Ariel Levine just turned five-years-old on November 3 and was in pre-school. Michael Levine was an independent contractor.
Apparently, flames at the house were so intense they were spotted and called in from a neighboring apartment complex. The house was already engulfed when fire crews arrived.
"In a home like this, where the downstairs is so open, once it got to the stairwell, it acted like a chimney and just shot straight up into the second floor and into the attic," said Dallas Fire Rescue spokesman Jason Evans.
Officials say it appears the family wasn't able to escape because the stairway was on fire and they were mostly likely unable to break out an upstairs window.
The inside of the house was destroyed, but investigators say there were operational smoke detectors in the house.
Investigators have determined that the fire started in the study and they believe the parents ran upstairs to try and get their son.
The cause of the fire hasn't been determined.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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