TAMPA: Sole fire survivor ponders suicide

Sole fire survivor ponders suicide
By Robbyn Mitchell and Thomas Kaplan, Times Staff Writers
In print: Wednesday, July 2, 2008

TAMPA — Last July, Wallace Ecenia Jr. awoke to the acrid scent of smoke and hoisted himself out his bedroom window to escape his burning home. When he went to rescue his sleeping mother and sister from outside, it was too late.

The only survivor to the fire that destroyed their home, Ecenia, 48, struggled to cope, telling his family as the fire's anniversary approached that he wanted to kill himself, police say.

On Tuesday, that struggle came to an abrupt climax when an armed Ecenia barricaded himself inside a sedan near his family's north Tampa gem shop, launching a tense standoff that ended more than five hours later when police finally convinced him to leave his car.

After he spent an afternoon holed up without air conditioning outside Wally's Natural Wonders at 6007 N Armenia Ave., police lured Ecenia out of the car with the promise of water.

Relatives had been worried about him because next week marks the anniversary of the fire, said Laura McElroy, a spokeswoman for the Tampa Police Department. Juanita Ecenia, 77, and Michelle Ecenia, 53, died last July after an early-morning fire gutted their Egypt Lake area home.

Wallace Ecenia Jr. suffered only minor cuts and bruises in the fire. While his family apparently slept through the blaze, he awoke to find the door of his bedroom hot from the flames.

Firefighters found his sister dead inside the home at 8601 Twin Lakes Blvd., and his mother died at a hospital. His father, Wallace Ecenia Sr., who also lived there, was not home at the time.
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