Woman, toddler killed in South Philadelphia row home fire

Two people have died and four others are in the hospital after a South Philadelphia row home caught fire early Friday morning.

Flames broke out inside the home on the 2600 block of South 3rd Street around 2 a.m. Friday.

Firefighters initially received reports of a fire with people trapped inside the home. When crews arrived on the scene they had to battle flames on the first floor before they found the bodies of the woman and the young boy inside the residence a short time later.

"He's such an energetic--spunky--he's just a fun kid. You see him and he's full of life. He's full of life. You couldn't even catch up to him," family member Dani Don said.

3-year-old Andrew Duong-- they called him JuJu--and his 36-year-old mother, Anna, died in a fire that saw four other family members scramble to safety.

"Basically, the entire first floor filled up with fire and the first arriving companies had to battle through their way through the first floor up to the second floor, extinguishing the fire all the way," Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said.

Dani Son says her male cousin-- the husband and father of the fire victims-- was in the basement dealing with a kerosene heater when something went wrong.

"He was just coming from the basement that was all. And next thing you know. he was on fire. He brought it upstairs and it just spread so fast," Son explained.

Neighbors were awakened to the sound of screams.

The mother and son were discovered by firefighters in a rear second-floor bedroom. They were already gone.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Anyone interested in helping the family with funeral or medical expenses, can visit the GoFundMe page set for the family.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.