Woman Dies in Venice Blaze

A 58-year-old bedridden woman died Friday morning after a fire sparked by a cigarette she had discarded engulfed the bedroom of her Venice home, Los Angeles City Fire Department officials said.

The victim’s mother escaped the flames without injury, but was unable to rescue her daughter, whom she had been caring for since the victim suffered a stroke 13 years ago, officials said.

Firefighters said that the three-bedroom home’s smoke detector was not working.

“The batteries had been removed,” said Capt. Mike Franklin, who was the first firefighter on the scene about 1:40 a.m. “It had been considered an annoyance.”

The victim’s mother is being taken care of by a nurse, who neighbors said lived part time with the women, he added.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said the victim had not been positively identified, and the Fire Department declined to release the name of the victim or the mother.

The residential fire was the fourth in the last 11 days in Los Angeles to result in the injury or death of someone with a disability, said Capt. Steve Ruda.

Recent fires, he said, killed two elderly women in Sherman Oaks and Sepulveda. A fire in Panorama City left a bedridden woman in critical condition.

Hours after the Friday blaze, Fire Department officials held a news conference outside the one-story stucco house on the corner of 6th Avenue and Dewey Street, warning people to check their smoke alarms and plan emergency escape routes from their homes.

Few neighbors knew the two women well, but several remembered the victim’s last few years, mostly spent in bed.

A series of strokes more than a decade ago left the woman paralyzed on one side and with restricted movement on the other, neighbors said. One of her few pleasures, they added, was smoking.

“She could barely move her hand--enough to smoke cigarettes and use the [television] remote control,” said Rick Lindsey, 44, who lives across the street. Lindsey, an auto mechanic, said that he built a winch on the woman’s bed so that she could pull herself up.

“She was a very nice lady,” he said.

Eddie Bueno, 75, a neighbor who helped the women with landscaping, recalled often chatting with the mother.

“They didn’t go out much,” Bueno said. “They stayed by themselves. I always tried to help them out.”