Montgomery firefighter Arik McGinnis, 20, takes a break after aiming a water cannon at hot spots in the rubble of a building on Monday, May 11, in Montgomery. McGinnis was one of the first people on the scene of the fire Sunday evening and had to be evaluated by EMS personnel after the building was searched for trapped residents.
MONTGOMERY, W.Va. — Three new college graduates lost everything Sunday when their apartment building burst into flames and eventually crumbled to the ground.
Jose Daniel Soto Arroyo, a former West Virginia University Institute of Technology baseball player, Juan Suarez Trujillo, a former soccer player for the school, and Zhu Lingxi, a recent business management graduate, all lived on the second floor of the building in Montgomery, which was estimated to be about 100 years old.
Suarez Trujillo’s mother and sister had surprised him by coming in for his graduation ceremony Saturday from their hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and they were all in his apartment Sunday evening when smoke started filling the air.
“I didn’t know what it was,” Suarez Trujillo recalled. “I thought maybe my mom was cooking something but there was nothing in the oven, so I opened the door of the apartment and it was all black smoke…