A man and two special needs children, ages 12 and 17, died in a fire that engulfed a home in New York's Orange County over the weekend, authorities say.
Firefighters and state police responded to the Pulaski Highway home in Goshen just after 8 p.m. Saturday for a report of a fire with people trapped. When they got there, the entire structure was in flames.
The two children were pulled from the home and taken to a hospital, where they later died of their injuries. The kids — Ryan and his younger brother, Travis — were nonverbal with autism.
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WATCH HEREAs firefighters were working to get them out, they found the body of a 50-year-old man, Shane Munn. State police said Munn was doing yardwork when the flames erupted, and he saw them tearing through the house. An upstairs neighbor saw him run inside, but Munn never made it back out.
Rescuers found Munn in the living room of his downstairs rental apartment, sources said. The two boys were both found in a bedroom.
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SIGN UP "I feel terribly for him and his children," said family friend Tom Mattingly.
Friends told NBC New York the father was determined to have his boys stay at home with him instead of being sent to a facility.
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Mattingly and his wife, Erin, said Munn was a regular at their restaurant in neighboring Florida since 2019. They developed a friendship with the man they described as a hardworking single dad who always talked about his boys.
"It was clear that he had a lot to deal with as a single parent of two children who had special needs," said Mattingly.
"We had many wonderful discussions about his two boys and he’d always ask about my children which I thought was so sweet. And he’d bring home dinner for his kids," Erin Mattingly said.
It was not clear what may have started the fire, though officials said it started in the upstairs neighbor's apartment. A preliminary investigation found the blaze was accidental.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, though it had preliminarily been determined to be an accident. A multi-agency probe is underway.
