Anthony Mitchell called his daughter from his home in Altadena, California, on Wednesday morning and told her that he was OK.
He had called for help, he said, and was waiting to be evacuated from his home, which was uncomfortably close to a fast-growing fire that had ignited in the Angeles National Forest.
Then Mitchell noticed something out the window.
“Baby, I got to go,” he said. “The fire just got in the yard.”
Mitchell lived on Terrace Street in Altadena with two sons, both in their 30s. It was a modest white house with a green front gate and green trim. Trees towered above the home’s carefully tended garden. The edge of a woods climbing up into the San Gabriel Mountains was just 10 blocks away.
Mitchell used a wheelchair after his leg was amputated last year, a complication of his diabetes. One of his sons, Justin, was born with cerebral palsy and was “bedridden,” according to Mitchell’s daughter, Hajime White.
Usually, Mitchell’s other son, Jordan, cared for both of them alongside a rotating team of professionals. But Jordan was not there that day. He had gone to the hospital earlier in the week with a case of sepsis. There were several cars in the driveway, but Mitchell could not drive them. As the fire came closer, whipped by strong winds barreling down the mountains, no ambulance appeared.
That night, Mitchell and Justin were both found dead.