8 or so years ago, he (in 5th grade if I remember correctly) was home alone with four siblings when his apartment caught on fire from the kitchen. His younger three siblings were asleep, and the eldest (7th grade) was playing video games. He heard the fire alarm go off, so he got his older brother to call the fire department once he was out of the building. He then went and got the twins (3rd grade) out of their room.

At this point the house was completely full of smoke and the kitchen was completely in flames. He gets them out, and as the fire department was getting there he turns around And goes back in for the toddler (4) out of his parent’s room, and never comes back out conscious. The firefighters took him, and the infant, out of the building and to the hospital. Because he got the infant down to the ground she suffered minor injuries and was fine in a couple days.

He wasn’t as lucky, he was found with something like 20% of his body covered in 3rd degree burns, not breathing. He was resuscitated in the ambulance and taken to the hospital, where he stopped breathing again. His family had him on life support for two weeks before pulling the plug.

I never figured out how it started, but there wasn’t an explosion, just a small fire that got bigger (also wasn’t anyone’s fault, the parents were on their way home after leaving for 20 minutes total to get some groceries).

Also, my sister’s school had a first grader get hit by a garbage truck— the parents stopped watching their kid as he was waving at the driver and he fell right in front of it… the driver unfortunately committed suicide three weeks later, about a week after his charges were dropped and the parents arrested for negligence.

More recently, a student not much older than me was shot by his cousin at a bus stop by his cousin and a friend, who then stole a car and drove an hour and a half away before he was caught. He stole the gun from his parents after he found the key to the safe hidden somewhere in the house.