FAIRVIEW TOWNSHIP (KDKA) — Just a week after Thanksgiving and just a few weeks before Christmas, the Steele family of Fairview Township, Butler County, did not need trouble like this. For more reasons than one.

Fire swept through their home just after 3 a.m.

Among those in the house at the time, 19-year-old Barry Steele and his friends who slept over because all of them planned to attend Friday’s funeral for 17-year-old Kyle Robinson, who died this week in a car crash on Route 68 in Armstrong County.

Robinson was on his way to pick up Steele when the accident happened.

“The other day, a friend of his was coming from East Brady, and he was coming to pick him up for Vo-Tech on Tuesday morning, and he ended up in a car accident and ended up passing away,” said Barry Steele, Sr., Steele’s father.

The teen’s mother was alerted to the fire and got everybody out safely.

KDKA-TV’s Harold Hayes asked the elder Steele: “How is he handling what he’s just gone through, and then this happening today?”

“Pretty good, but he… a few days later things usually hit him, but he’ll be all right,” replied Steele. “He’s got all his friends, and plus his family and stuff, and he’s got a pretty good support system so he’ll be all right. All the kids will be all right. They got each other. They got us.”

Friends of the family have set up a fund for the family through Huntington Bank in Chicora.

“I have no insurance so trying to do what I can do and that’s all I can do,” said Steele.

In spite of all that’s happened recently, they know that things still could have been a lot worse.

RELATED LINKS:
More Butler County News
More Local News