Fort Worth father on the run after being accused of abandoning kids before fatal fire
Jerome Anderson told Amberlee Sharp that he had left their 3-year-old daughter and his two young sons alone for just a few minutes on Sept. 21 in a west Fort Worth apartment while he threw away some trash.
A fire erupted in the apartment and the two boys ran out, but 3-year-old Aaliyah Anderson didn’t make it out. She died two days after firefighters pulled her out of the burning apartment.
For months now, there has been an arrest warrant out for the 30-year-old Anderson, charging him with abandoning/endangering a child, a state jail felony, and accusing him of not being at the apartment complex when the fire started.
On Tuesday, Anderson remained on the run, authorities said.
Sharp, Aaliyah’s mother, believes Anderson is still in Fort Worth, but he’s managed to elude authorities.
“In February, someone posted videos of him at clubs in Fort Worth and Arlington,” Sharp said. “He acts like he doesn’t care.”
The one-alarm apartment fire occurred just before 2 p.m. on Sept. 21 in the 9000 block of Brian Way Circle. according to the Fort Worth Fire Department call log.
Just days after the fire, Deborah McNeely of Fort Worth, Aaliyah’s grandmother and Jerome Anderson’s mother, told the Star-Telegram that she wasn’t sure what happened on that afternoon.
Sharp, who is not married to Anderson, said Anderson kept Aaliyah during the day along with his two sons, ages 10 and 7, as she worked. This arrangement had been going on for about a year before the fire.
Sharp and her daughter lived in the same complex where Anderson stayed with his two sons.
“There had never been any problems,” Sharp said.
On the afternoon of Sept. 21, Sharp received a call from officials at the apartment complex, telling her about a fire.
“I dropped the phone, got in my car and drove 100 mph on the highway to get to the complex,” Sharp said. “I pulled up and she was already in an ambulance. I followed in another ambulance, and Jerome drove to the hospital.”
At the hospital when she wasn’t watching over Aaliyah, Sharp asked Anderson what had happened.
“He said it was an electrical fire,” Sharp said. “(He said) he had been out taking the trash when it started and he couldn’t get to her.”
Aaliyah died on Sept. 23 from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning, according to a ruling by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office. Her manner of death was listed an undetermined.
Fort Worth fire officials have listed the cause of the fire as undetermined, according to Sharp.
Sharp said that after Aaliyah’s funeral Anderson repeatedly texted and called her, but that all stopped when the warrant was issued for him.
Sharp said surveillance cameras in the neighborhood on Sept. 21 showed Anderson get in a car and the vehicle drive away, leaving his two boys and Aaliyah alone in the apartment.
Sharp said she doesn’t know how long Anderson was gone before he rushed back just as his sons got out of the apartment.
“I don’t know where he was,” Sharp said. “Now, it’s like he has no sympathy that he lost a kid.”
