Destiny Davis asked to stay up just a little later on Christmas to play the video game she’d gotten as a gift.
Destiny, 5, her mother Katherine Ivery, and her two brothers all fell asleep under one blanket in the front room of their Englewood home that night. At some point overnight, Ivery said Destiny decamped to the top half of her bunk bed, while her father slept on the bottom.
The next morning, Ivery was in the next room making a bottle for her infant son when she heard Destiny scream three times.
“I thought maybe she was just having a bad dream,” Ivery said. “But when I turned around to face her room, I could see this bright light flickering off the wall.”
Ivery said she opened the door to the bedroom and saw Destiny’s bed “engulfed in flames.”
Destiny was pronounced dead at about 7:45 a.m. Dec. 26. Her parents both suffered serious burns trying to get her out of the bed. Ivery said she doesn’t know how the fire started.
Chicago Fire Department spokesperson Larry Langford said Tuesday the official cause of the blaze was careless use of smoking materials. The Fire Department has turned over investigative materials to Chicago police, he added.
Ivery said a firefighter later told her the type of mattress her daughter was sleeping on may have worsened the fire.
“He said once it’s ignited you have less than seconds because (the fire) spreads, as if it had lighter fluid or something,” she said.
Ivery and her sons, ages 6 and 11 months, are staying with family in the aftermath of the fire. Her husband left the hospital Dec. 27 and is staying with his sister, she said.
A week after the fire, Ivery said “it feels like someone just snatched all the joy out of my body.”
Her older son does not understand what happened to his sister and is asking her questions she doesn’t know how to answer.
“He keeps saying, ‘Mama, why didn’t you wake me up? I could have saved her,’ ” she said. “And it’s like, No, you couldn’t have.”
Afternoon Briefing
Weekdays
Chicago Tribune editors’ top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon.
Destiny enjoyed catching and examining lightning bugs, lady bugs and pill bugs, Ivery said.
She loved to draw and dance, “even though she didn’t have any rhythm,” and was a social butterfly in her kindergarten class at McKay Elementary School.
“Every single time we had to leave we’d sit there for an extra two minutes while everyone gave her a hug,” Ivery said.
Her favorite song to sing was the “I love you song,” which she had made up herself.
It went: “I love my mommy, I love my daddy, I love my baby (brother), I love my brother.”
Ivery said its verses never changed. It was the only song Destiny sang.