[symple_googlemap title=”99 Cents Plus Store fire” location=”4700 block of South Broadway, Los Angeles, CA” height=”300″ zoom=”16″]
A couple who recently relocated from Las Vegas to run a 99 Cents Plus store in a Los Angeles strip mall died Tuesday in a fire that gutted the business.
The man, in his 60s, and the woman, in her 50s, were pulled from the store in the 4700 block of South Broadway and died at a hospital, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department and the coroner’s office.
Their names were withheld by authorities, but Chris McCants identified the victims as her sister and her sister’s boyfriend.
“I talked to her last night in Chicago and I wanted her to come stay in my house,” she told NBC4. “… I was planning on coming down here today because they stayed in the store sometimes, you know?”
The building was not zoned for residential occupancy and which was not equipped with working smoke alarms, Channel 4 reported. The building also had security gates and locks that initially hampered firefighters’ ability to access the structure.
The cause of the 5:35 a.m. fire, which took 31 minutes to extinguish and also damaged adjacent businesses, was under investigation. A damage estimate was not immediately released.
—City News Service