Ariel Rios Federal Building, the headquarters of the ATF.
PHILADELPHIA – The mother of two children who died in a 2020 fire in Southwest Philadelphia is tired of waiting on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to conclude its investigation into the cause.
Beionca Harris sued the ATF Oct. 20 in federal court, more than six years after a fire in a rowhome on Bonnaffon Street claimed the lives of her kids, four-year-old Nasir Harper-Wilford Jr. and one-year-old Liam Harper. The children’s grandmother, Nassira Harper, also died of carbon monoxide toxicity and smoke inhalation.
While Philadelphia “ordered the home gutted,” ATF took photographs and physical evidence from the site, the suit says. They are the only methods left to determine whether smoke alarms and fire-suppression equipment were faulty, Harris adds.
She issued a subpoena to the ATF in 2021 and filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in Philadelphia state court, but it was stayed for nearly three years thanks to the ATF’s delay.
“ATF has never explained why its investigation of a residential fire has remained open for more than six and one-half years, what enforcement proceeding (if any) disclosure would interfere with, or why photographs of the scene and the physical remnants of the home’s smoke alarms and detectors cannot be made available for inspection,” the suit says.
“Upon information and belief, no criminal charges have been filed in connection with the fire.”
The ATF says it is waiting on a determination that releasing the materials would not interfere with the investigation of the fire, claiming it is “finalizing its review… and will be sending a determination letter expeditiously as possible.”
The stay was lifted on Harris’ wrongful-death case in July. She sought to enforce the subpoena in that case, but the federal government removed the issue to federal court, where a judge found sovereign immunity bars a state-court judge from ordering a federal agency to comply with a subpoena.
So Harris is now suing in federal court. She calls the delay an “arbitrary and capricious agency action” and is represented by John Lang of Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky, the firm handling her wrongful-death case against Philadelphia Lotus 08, LLC.
The pretrial memorandum deadline there is Dec. 7, with a trial scheduled for Jan. 4.
“Unless ATF is compelled to act promptly, Plaintiff will be forced to try the wrongful death claims of her two young children without the only evidence of the condition of the home in which they died,” Harris says. “That harm cannot be undone after trial.”
