STAMFORD, Conn. A funeral service will be held in New York for three sisters who died with their grandparents in a tragic early-morning Christmas house fire in Stamford, The Day of Connecticut reported on its website.
Dominic Carella, vice president of the Frank Campbell Funeral Home, said a private wake will be held Wednesday at the funeral home in Manhattan for 10-year-old Lily Badger and 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah Badger.
A public service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Manhattan. A private service will be held at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, N.Y., for the sisters and their grandparents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, who also died in the devastating blaze.
Members of the Stamford Fire Department, which responded to the raging blaze, plan to attend both services, Carella told the New York Daily News. Funeral plans for the grandparents were still in progress, he said.
Fire officials blamed a discarded bag of fireplace ashes for starting the blaze. All five victims died of smoke inhalation. Lomer Johnson also suffered blunt head and neck injuries.
Homeowner Madonna Badger, the girls' mother and the Johnsons' daughter, and her friend-contactor Michael Borcina were the only survivors of the fast-moving 4:50 a.m. blaze that destroyed the $1.7 million three-story Victorian home in the Shippan waterfront neighborhood.
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