The owner of a building where four children died in a fire Monday has been cited for failing to adequately maintain three other buildings he owns on the South Side.
City inspectors found different, and in some cases overlapping, deficits with the buildings, including defective smoke detectors, missing carbon monoxide detectors, cockroach infestations, unsafe stairways and doors, and windows and walls that had fallen into disrepair, according to city inspection reports from the buildings department.
The inspections of the buildings occurred Tuesday, a day after a fire ravaged owner Tahir Sheikh’s 18-unit apartment complex at 11238 S. Vernon Ave. Killed in the fire were Carliysia Clark, 16, Carlvon Clark, 13, Shamarion Clark, 12, and Eriana Smith, 7. The mother of the children, Shamaya Coleman, was injured, as was her boyfriend, Nate Johnson. Both jumped from the third-floor apartment where they were living.
The building had failed its most recent inspection in June for municipal code violations that included failure to install and maintain smoke detectors. The city re-inspected the property after the fire and asked a Cook County circuit judge on Tuesday to have it vacated and secured immediately due to “dangerous and hazardous” conditions.
The other inspections were done at Sheikh’s properties at 7954 S. Harvard Ave., 7150 S. Cornell Ave. and 8003 S. Ingleside Ave.
Sheikh, who is also a psychiatrist in the western suburbs, could not be reached for comment. He said Tuesday that his management company, which oversees the other buildings he owns in Chicago, told him in August every tenant at the Vernon building had reported having working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.
A spokeswoman for J&J Real Estate Management and Construction said that the company took over management of the building in July and that “the smoke detectors were installed.” A building’s owner is responsible for installing smoke detectors or replacing broken detectors, while it is the tenant’s responsibility to make sure they have working batteries.
A Fire Department spokesman said there did not appear to be working smoke detectors in the second-floor apartment where the fire is believed to have started or in the third-floor unit where the children died. But fire officials could not say if Sheikh’s managers had installed smoke detectors or if they were destroyed in the fire.
The fire broke out early Monday in the second-floor apartment, raced down a hallway and up a stairwell to the third floor, trapping Coleman, Johnson and her four children, fire officials said.
Coleman and Johnson were able to jump to safety from a window, but the children all died. Firefighters found the oldest child, Carliysia Clark, in an alcove, apparently trying to shield a sibling.
The inspection reports became public on the same day a lawyer for Johnson’s mother filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court. The lawyer alleged conditions in the apartment building made it a “death trap.”
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