3-year-old killed in house fire

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas – A three-year-old boy is dead after a devastating trailer fire near Magnolia.

Melissa Myers said she left her three year old son Dakota asleep in their trailer with a 10-year-old cousin around 1 a.m Saturday. Myers said she ran next door to wash her hair at her mother's house when a fire broke out in the trailer.

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"It happened that fast," Myers said.

"She went to rinse her hair and she came back and it was on fire," said Myers' mother Sheila Landreneaw. "How does it catch on fire in five minutes?"

Landreneaw said the flames woke up the ten year old cousin. As the cousin ran for his own life, he didn't want to leave Dakota behind.

"He said he tried to get the baby out, but he couldn't get the baby out," Landreneaw said.

Myers said she ran to the trailer to try to save her son.

"We all ran as fast as we could," Myers said.

Montgomery County firefighters arrived on the scene to find the cousin had made it out of the burning trailer but Dakota was still trapped.

"Several attempts were made not only by firefighters, but by family members and friends to get in the travel trailer," said assistant fire marshal Scott Burlin, "but they were not successful, too much fire and flame."

Fire investigators said the little boy died in a back bedroom at a home he had only known for a few days.

"The mom and the three year old had just moved in two to three day ago," said Burlin.

Burlin said the trailer had electricity but no propane yet. Now Myers recounts her last moves and the final moments of her son's life.

"We do have an electric blanket, but I unplugged it," said Myers. "No candles were burning, nothing at all."

Arson investigators are looking into the cause of the fire. Burlin said this case is the first fire death in Montgomery County for 2012.