SEATTLE, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Three young Seattle children were pulled from a burning apartment where they had been left unattended and placed in protective custody.
Police said a maintenance man at the building in the Capitol Hill neighborhood got the three uninjured toddlers out of the smoke-filled unit where a mattress had somehow caught fire Wednesday night.
There was no adult in the apartment; however Officer Deborah Brown said Thursday a woman identifying herself as the children's mother contacted the police department Wednesday night. She told officers she left the kids with her 16-year-old sister, but did not know where she was or why she left the apartment.
KOMO-TV, Seattle, said the children's father also called and said both he and his wife had been at work and thought the teenager was watching the kids.
