A former Widefield resident was killed on New Year’s Day along with four of his children when a fire tore through their apartment in a Seattle suburb.
David Thompson and four of his sons died a year and a half after they moved from the Colorado Springs area to start anew in Washington, said Josh Funkhouser of Manitou Springs, Thompson’s friend of 15 years.
Thompson’s wife, Lilly Resor, was the only person to survive the blaze. She was being treated at a Seattle-area hospital for smoke inhalation and other injuries, said hospital spokeswoman Sherry Grindeland.
Funkhouser remembered Thomp son — who was known as “Moose” to his friends — as a “jokester” but also an “awesome father.” Thompson grew up in the Colorado Springs area and attended Widefield High School, said Funkhouser, who met him while the two worked at Two Men and a Truck, a moving company.
When Thompson’s own moving business began to struggle, he moved his family to Redmond, Wash., where he was taking tests to become a firefighter. He worked as a maintenance man at the apartment complex where he lived.
“This guy taught me how to take the heaviest chore in front of you and smile and laugh about it all the way through it,” Funkhouser said. “He was definitely someone that would stand out in a crowd and want to be standing out in the crowd.”
Thompson met Resor while still in Colorado, where the two had three children together, all of whom died in the blaze, Funkhouser said. Thompson had three children from an earlier marriage, one of whom also was killed Saturday.
His ex-wife and the two surviving children still live in Colorado Springs, Funkhouser said.
“I was envious” of his parenting skills, Funkhouser said, pointing out how Thompson was “able to bring six kids together and to love one another and to respect one another.”
Fire and police investigators have not pinpointed the cause of the early-morning fire and are not sure when or if they will have an official cause, said Redmond Police spokesman Greg Twentey. Investigators returned to the scene Sunday.
The fire was reported about 2:30 a.m. Saturday and quickly burned the two units above it. All three units were heavily damaged, and the apartments next to them have smoke damage, fire officials said.
The building is one in a complex of three-story buildings in a wooded area just northwest of downtown Redmond. It is about 2 miles north of the Microsoft Corp. campus and about 12 miles east of Seattle.
The buildings have smoke detectors but not sprinklers, which weren’t required when the complex was built, said police Officer Matt Peringer.
“It’s not just a small group of friends — it’s a whole community here in Colorado Springs that’s really missing out on him and his family,” Funkhouser said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
