A fire early Tuesday morning in Sulphur Springs has cost the lives of a young man and three dogs.<\/p>\n
A neighbor of Terrance McGriff<\/strong> called 9-1-1 to report seeing smoke coming from the roof of his house in the 8400 block of North 16th<\/sup> Street.<\/p>\n When firefighters arrived and entered the house, they found McGriff<\/strong>, 30, on the floor near the front door.<\/p>\n Tampa Fire Rescue personnel performed CPR on McGriff<\/strong>, and he was transported to a local hospital in critical condition. On Wednesday evening, he was pronounced dead.<\/p>\n His mother, Anita McGriff<\/strong>, said Terrance<\/strong> was brain dead, and it had come down to the family deciding to take him off life support.<\/p>\n \u201cAs far as the fire is concerned, he constantly called his landlord to complain about a problem with his stove, but he never came to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Tampa Fire Rescue, the cause of the fire was a pot left on the stove.<\/p>\n Mrs. McGriff<\/strong> said she has three other children, and they are all very depressed about losing their brother.<\/p>\n Terrance McGriff<\/strong> grew up in Elmira, New York, and moved to Tampa in 1998 after living in Clearwater for a while. He wasn\u2019t married, and was a chronic diabetic.<\/p>\n \u201cHis diabetes was a big problem, and he spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital,\u201d said Mrs. McGriff<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe moved into his house two years ago, and we\u2019d all go by to check on him. He was supposed to be moving in with his brother the morning of the fire. He had only come back to the house to gather his belongings, and his brother was supposed to pick him up Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n \u201cTerrance<\/strong> was a beautiful person, and although he experienced problems where he was living, he managed to keep himself out of trouble and was always respectful.\u201d<\/p>\n McGriff\u2019s<\/strong> father, Aaron McGriff<\/strong>, said the entire family is outraged, and he\u2019s spoken to the city\u2019s Code Enforcement about the faulty stove in his son\u2019s house.<\/p>\n \u201cHe constantly called the landlord telling him the stove needed to be replaced, but he never came. Terrance lost his Section 8 because he couldn\u2019t afford his high electric bills. It was because the stove would stay on all the time.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually went over to Terrance\u2019s<\/strong> house and did a lot of work so he could have a safe place to live.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. McGriff<\/strong> said officials with Code Enforcement have told them they will investigate the incident, and have a report ready for the family in a few days.<\/p>\n \u201cThis tragedy could have been worse if there had been more people living in the house. This should really have never happened, and it wouldn\u2019t have if the landlord had taken the time to replace the stove.\u201d<\/p>\n The McGriff<\/strong> family is asking for help with funeral arrangements for Terrance as he was not insured at the time of his death.<\/p>\n A fire early Tuesday morning in Sulphur Springs has cost the lives of a young man and three dogs. A neighbor of Terrance McGriff called 9-1-1 to report seeing smoke coming from the roof of his house in the 8400 block of North 16th Street. When firefighters arrived and entered the house, they found McGriff, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}