None of the boys spoke English very well. They passed by the other children with little more than a broken hello, but together, they chattered away in Polish.
Together, the three boys rode their bicycles around the Northwest Side neighborhood where they lived. They traveled along streets of scrubbed, yellow-brick bungalows that sometimes, behind their doors, hid three or more immigrant families similar to their own, sleeping in neatly arranged rows of mattresses on the floor.
Sometimes they played computer games or, to the irritation of their neighbors, set off firecrackers.
The other thing they liked to do was to smoke. The oldest of them was no more than 12, but all of them had smoked at least since last year. Marlboro Lights and Newports, mostly.
They had been caught smoking–and reprimanded–at least once, and so, when they wanted to smoke Thursday morning, they locked themselves in the two-car garage on the alley behind one boy’s home, at 5940 W. Newport Ave. There they would be safe from prying adult eyes.
Twenty minutes later, Marcin Nogawka, who was 11, and Michal Warias and Karl Szypcio, both 12, were dead, killed in a fire that erupted with ferocious swiftness.
They died as Michal’s brother, only 13 himself, and a friend pounded against the side door they had locked. Firefighters found their bodies crumpled next to the overhead door they had unsuccessfully tried to open.
While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, Chicago Fire Department officials think the boys may have accidentally ignited a can of lacquer thinner near the door, maybe with a spark from a cigarette or a carelessly tossed match.
People used the garage to work on cars, and it was crammed with any number of things that could catch fire–cans of gasoline, oily car parts, used rags.
The three boys did not die from smoking in the usual sense. But in days when cigarette use by children has become a national political issue, the apparent connection between smoking and the fire imbues their deaths with another shade of poignancy.
Last week, President Clinton announced that the Food and Drug Administration would begin regulating tobacco, in large part to stanch the rise in underage smoking. One rule under consideration would require anyone under 27 to present photo identification to buy cigarettes.
A 1995 survey by the Centers for Disease Control found that 34.8 percent of children between the ages of 9 and 12 had smoked cigarettes that year. The number was up from 27.5 percent just four years earlier.
Michal’s brother Roman, who lives at 6301 W. Eddy St. with his mother and three siblings, smokes too. Asked Thursday what Michal had liked to do besides ride his bike, Roman looked off for a moment, and answered in English.
“He liked to smoke,” he said. “They all liked to smoke.”
Roman said he left the three boys at the garage behind the house at about 10:50 a.m. He went inside the bungalow with a friend, who lived there.
A few minutes later, Roman heard someone yelling, and he ran out to the garage. He saw the fire, tried to open the door and then ran back to get his friend, he said through a translator. The friend tried to kick in the door but couldn’t.
By 11:08, two minutes after someone reported the blaze, the firefighters arrived.
Smoke plumed out the side door. As they worked to extinguish the blaze, the firefighters pulled up the overhead door, according to the Chicago Fire Department spokesman, Cmdr. Patrick Howe. When the door reached the height of their waists, they saw the boys’ bodies. They had fairly minor flashburns, but likely died of smoke inhalation, fire officials said.
It appears the fire started next to the side door, blocking the exit. The boys apparently tried in vain, to pull up the electronic overhead door, said Deputy District Chief Daniel Moll of the Chicago Fire Department’s 2nd District. Apparently, they didn’t know they could open the door with an emergency release, Moll said.
The fire was out within 10 minutes. But as night fell, neighbors still gathered at the garage and peered at the smoke-darkened car within.
“It’s a hard lesson and a tragedy,” said 53-year-old Vincent Burdulis, who has lived in the neighborhood for about 15 years.
Once a mix of German, Irish and second- or third-generation Polish families, the area has, in recent years, increasingly become home to an influx of recent Polish immigrants. Some of them live in bungalows illegally converted to multi-family residences.
In fact, the home at 5940 W. Newport, where Marcin lived in the basement with his father, was under investigation by the city’s Illegal Conversion Task Force.
One neighbor, who asked not to be named, described it as a “Polish hotel.” In the basement, where Marcin lived with his father, John, mattresses and beds lined the floor. At least 10 people lived in the home, neighbors said.
The three friends lived near each other and attended Peter Reinberg Elementary School, 3525 N. Major Ave., where they would have started classes next week. Karl was in the 6th grade, Michal, 5th grade, and Marcin, 4th.
Karl had lived for about five months in a two-flat at 6123 W. Roscoe St., with his mother and two sisters. The family had emigrated 2 1/2 years ago from Monki, Poland. His father also lives in Chicago, but the parents are divorced, family members said.
Small for his age, with blond hair, he liked to ride his bicycle “on one back wheel,” his 15-year-old sister, Eva, recalled.
“He never thought of the worst,” she said. “He was always smiling.”
The boys weren’t considered troublemakers in the neighborhood, but they had gotten their share of reprimands for setting off firecrackers, and neighbors knew they smoked.
Last year, Stephanie Paplaczyk, who has lived next door to the bungalow for 40 years, caught them in the back yard. They were puffing away unawares, until Paplaczyk came out and told them to stop.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” she told them. “It’s not good for you.”
They immediately put out their cigarettes, and that, she thought, was the end of it.
