Victims share blame for their deaths

While it is very tragic about these five transient people who died in a vacant boarded up house fire, you cannot blame the owner for all of this.

The fault belongs to the victims. They broke into the house illegally, took up residence there illegally and set fire to the house in some yet undetermined way. All of what happened is a result of their illegal actions. Also, the city of Fresno took it upon themselves to board up the windows, which ended up trapping them inside.

There have been other such incidents occurring with homeless people breaking and entering other properties and setting fires. What about the tremendous property damages they created? There are decent shelters to take refuge in; the Fresno Rescue Mission is one of them.

I don’t know who or where the real owners are, but I assume they pretty much abandoned this house entirely. After 20 years of vacancy, it would have been better to have demolished the house entirely rather than make a firetrap out of it.

This story was originally published December 19, 2015 at 5:49 AM with the headline "Victims share blame for their deaths."