At four in the morning Sunday, April 3, in the Willard Avenue frame house he shared with his invalid mother, Spur resident Jesse Starry heard “a big boom.” The sound roused him instantly from sleep.
“My dog Anabelle came running, landed right in middle of my chest,” Starry said. He rushed to open the front door of the house. Backdraft from a fire instantly burned his hair and the skin on his arms.
Starry, whose mother, 66-year-old Virgie Maynard, was still inside, was not the only one to hear the loud noise.
Four blocks away at home on Keeler Avenue, resident Gregory Hardin heard it too. Still wakeful after easing his young daughter back to sleep, Hardin heard “two really fast sounds like fireworks or mortars going off in the distance.” From his window Hardin could see the flames and the plume of smoke, which appeared so close by he feared it was his adjacent neighbor’s home.
Hardin said he got dressed quickly, hopped into his wife’s car, and drove in the direction of the fire. There he parked next to a man he believed, in the early dark, to be his neighbor Matthew Olivarez, who had arrived with a female friend. Hardin could see from across the street that a pickup truck in the home’s front yard was fully engulfed in flames; only the porch of the house seemed to be burning at first. The fire spread quickly through the wooden structure.
“Hey, we would start banging on doors,” Hardin heard the other man say.
Inside, Starry ran to his mother’s beside. Maynard expressed some concern for locating her gun, hidden beneath a stack of magazines, in the midst of increasing smoke. By then close-by neighbors had raised the alarm and heard shouts from behind the house as Olivarez and Hardin called out to any possible occupants.
“Come on, mom, let’s go, it’s time,” Starry urged her.
With exit out the front blocked, Starry carried his mother in his arms to the back side of the house. He used first his fist and then his foot to break out window glass.
There, across the sill where the neighbors had placed a blanket over glass shards, Starry handed his mother out to waiting arms. Hardin, who could not recognize Starry through the thick smoke and was still unaware he’d been inside all along, pulled Maynard over the sill. The neighbors found an abandoned wheelchair in the yard, cleared it of debris so that Hardin could set her safely there, and wheeled Maynard away from the blaze.
Starry escaped by the same route. The dog could not be saved.
Volunter firefighters arrived on the scene soon afterward and, though unable to save the home, prevented destruction of the houses on either side.
Spur VFD chief Wess Abbott reported that the house’s back door had been padlocked shut, and that there were no smoke detectors in the home.
The Texas Spur was not immediately able to reach Olivarez for comment.
Maynard received care locally and was transported to a Lubbock hospital the following day, said Laurie Robinson of Helping Hands, which also provided clothing and other necessities for Starry and Maynard. Starry received immediate care from Red Cross volunteers.
Starry is now seeking a hospital bed for his mother, who is still unable to walk following a broken neck and back suffered in a fall last year, he said. She is currently undergoing rehabilitation therapy.
In the chaos of the fire, Starry said he was still not aware of exactly which good Samaritans or firefighters showed up to help, especially when he handed his mother out the back window. “If I knew I would walk up to them and shake their hand,” he said.
The cause of the blaze is still under investigation by the Spur Police Department, with no new leads to date, according to chief Billy Spears. Starry said he has his own suspicions about the origin of the fire; law enforcement has not identified any person of interest to the media.
The Lubbock fire marshal’s office is also unable to comment on the ongoing investigation at this point.
Starry welcomes anyone in the community who may be able to help with a temporary home and a hospital bed to call him at (806) 775-0852.
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