The 26-year-old woman and five of her children were killed in the fire at an extended living motel in southwest Michigan. Her husband and another child survived.
A 26-year-old woman and five of her children were killed in a fire early on Saturday morning at a motel in Michigan, the authorities said.
The fire swept through the Cosmo Extended Stay Motel in Sodus, Mich., at about 1:45 a.m., killing the mother and her children, ages 2 through 10, the Berrien County sheriff’s office said in a news release.
The police identified the woman as Kiarre Curtis; the police earlier on Saturday identified her as Kiarre Samuel.
Her husband, Samuel Curtis, 36, and her 1-year-old daughter were staying in the same room but survived the fire, said Chief Deputy Robert Boyce, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office.
The family was from the Benton Harbor, Mich., area, he said.
Investigators are trying to determine how and where the fire started, but the authorities believe it did not start in the room where the family members died, he said.
The motel is near a highway in Sodus, about 200 miles west of Detroit. Twenty-seven of the motel’s 60 rooms were occupied at the time of the fire.
About 90 percent of the motel was damaged by smoke, fire or water, the authorities said.
