KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City, Missouri, police have opened a suspicious death investigation after a 3-year-old boy was critically injured and a woman died in a house fire Wednesday night near East 55th Street and Woodland Avenue.
The woman who died in the fire is 66-year-old Dora Gamble, according to her daughter, and the injured 3-year-old is a grandson Gamble was raising.
“I think the question is what I’m not going to miss,” Gamble’s daughter, Tiffany Dawson, said. “Her smile mostly. She just warms the room.”
Neighbors smelled smoke and called both 911 and the Kansas City, Missouri, Fire Department around 4:45 p.m.
When KCFD crews arrived, the porch was collapsing under firefighters’ feet.
A KCFD spojesperson said they found Gamble and the 3-year-old on the second floor and initiated CPR on both victims, who were transported to separate hospitals.
Gamble later died of her injuries.
KCFD’s Bomb and Arson Unit is investigating the fire and consider the origin of the fire suspicious.
Dawson agrees.
“I felt like it was definitely done on purpose,” she said.
Court records obtained by 41 Action News show Gamble filed a restraining order against a man who lived with her in 2020.
41 Action News is not naming the man because he has not been charged with a crime.
Dawson said Gamble's car also was set on fire in December.
“They came home, went in the house, 15 minutes later she heard a kaboom," Dawson said. "Her car is in flames and now the house burns down the same way. I believe foul play took place and my mom was not conscious when that fire broke out."
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