Apartment Choice

December 31, 1994 | By LAURA UNGAR; Courant Staff Writer COVENTRY — Three-year-old Jared Brelsford's tiny black bicycle stood outside the charred, icicle- covered apartment building where he and his mother, Lisa, died late Thursday . The two were killed in a three-alarm blaze that left 11 adults and nine children homeless. The fire destroyed their apartment and heavily damaged two of the seven others in the 100-year-old former St. Mary's Church at 62 School St. The Brelsfords -- whose names were confirmed by neighbors and co-workers but not fire or police officials -- were the third and fourth victims of fatal fires in Connecticut this week. Brelsford, 27, lived with her son in an upstairs apartment at 62-D Church Hill Apartments , where the blaze is believed to have started about 10:30 p.m. State and local emergency officials have yet to determine the cause. Neighbors and co-workers who knew the Brelsfords remembered Jared as a friendly, rambunctious preschooler who liked ...

By the summer, the cost of living there was impossible for the family to afford. They gathered their belongings again to travel to Tabqa, a city recently reclaimed from ISIS. There, Fatima’s father was waiting for them. Though the streets were still littered with rubble, bodies buried beneath , it was close to the place they considered home. In May, after months of silence, a WhatsApp message came from Sabah, who was back home in Tartus. ‘‘Shahd died,’’ the message read. Shahd would have turned 10 in two weeks. She died on the ward at Al-Bayrouni, her mother at her side. They had made the journey back to the hospital three times over those months. After each chemo session, Shahd would lose her appetite completely, her body weakening. As she lost strength, the tumors in her body made gains . ‘‘The cancer reached all the way to her brain,’’ Sabah said. In the final weeks, Shahd slipped into a coma. The Alawites believe that each person is born from a star and will return again to the s...