SOUTH ST. PAUL - Chanry Soeng sat in a crowded room at her uncle’s home Wednesday afternoon, fighting back tears as she spoke about the house fire that killed her husband and their two young sons in South St. Paul.
Flanked by her two stepdaughters and other family members - many of whom grew up in Cambodia, Soeng said she was on her way home from her second-shift job at a Lakeville packaging company Tuesday night when she learned about the fire from South St. Paul police.
When Soeng reached her house, she was told of the tragic result: Her husband, Soeun Sem, 60, and their youngest son, Eric, 1, had died. The couple’s other son, Alexander, 5, was transported to Regions Hospital in St. Paul, where he was pronounced dead late Tuesday night.
“I don’t know what to feel,” Soeng, 35, said Wednesday, then wept while her head rested on her stepdaughter’s shoulder at her uncle’s Bloomington home.
Firefighters found the three victims in the second level of the house, a block south of the Southview Boulevard commercial area. Firefighters from the South Metro and Inver Grove Heights fire departments responded to the blaze about 9 p.m. and found flames coming out of the attached garage at the back the house, said Mark Erickson, assistant chief with the South Metro Fire Department.
“We started putting water on the garage and then sent a crew to the front of the house, where we had smoke and fire on the first floor at the back side,” he said.
Firefighters were able to prevent the flames from reaching the second floor, he said. Local investigators and the state fire marshal’s were investigating the cause of the fire, he said. Investigators do not yet know if there were working smoke detectors in the home, he said.
Sem immigrated to the United States in 1984 with his first wife, Miranda Uy, after the couple married in a refugee camp in Thailand, Uy said. Two years later, they moved to St. Paul, where they raised two daughters and a son, Uy said. Sem met Soeng - his second wife - during one of his trips back home to Cambodia. They married seven years ago in Battambang, Cambodia. Soeng said her husband never passed up an opportunity to acknowledge his neighbors as they passed their South St. Paul house.
“He always liked to say ‘hi’ to our neighbors and take the boys outside,” she said.
Sem did not work because of a disability, and relished his role as a stay-at-home dad, said his daughter, Rita Sem.
“The boys followed him around everywhere,” said Sem, 31, of St. Paul.
Melanie Uy, Sem’s other daughter, said he used to work as a cook at various restaurants, such as Tailan in Inver Grove Heights.
“He was such a hard worker,” Sem, 22, of St. Paul, said, adding that he recently had back surgery.
Neighbor Rachell Gerten said the family moved into their South St. Paul about two years and that she would see Soeng working in his backyard garden, his two sons nearby. In September, when Alexander started kindergarten, Sem would walk the boys to the corner bus stop, Gerten said. Alex spent a lot of time reading books, while Eric enjoyed cartoons, family members said.
On Tuesday night, when Gerten noticed the fire from her house across the street, “my heart sank,” she said, “and I ran outside … like everyone around here did.”
But Gerten didn’t think anyone was inside the house because the family’s van was not out front and their two TVs were not on - as they usually were at night.
She saw firefighters enter the front of the house and come out with the three victims.
“They worked on them for a long time,” she said of the victims. “It’s just really tragic for everyone.”
The deaths were hitting the communities hard, he said.
“From a community perspective, the neighbors around here know that there are children that live in the house and they are here one day and not the next,” he said. “And that’s hard to wrap your head around.”
