Fire destroyed a mobile home Wednesday evening in a hamlet southeast of Little Rock, killing at least six people, including five children, police said.
State police spokesman Bill Sadler said youngsters in the neighborhood reported additional children may have been in the home when the fire broke out shortly after 6 p.m.
“A search is under way, based on witness accounts, (for the bodies of) other children that may have been in the mobile home,” Sadler said.
A neighbor, Virginia Beliew, said a woman who lived in the mobile home “kept some children” for others during the day.
No names or ages of the victims were released. Sadler said the sixth confirmed victim appeared to be an adult woman.
Britney Hanson, 17, who lives nearby, said she tried to console the parents of some of the children who arrived before the fire was out, and had to restrain them from entering the house while it was still ablaze.
“They were saying, ’My babies, my babies,”’ Hanson said.
Autopsies were to be performed at the state Crime Lab in Little Rock.
Humphrey, a village of about 800, is located about 40 miles southeast of the city.
Officials of the Humphrey School District said Thursday’s classes had been canceled.
In 2000, four Humphrey teenagers driving back to school at the end of their lunch break were killed in a collision with a train.