Overview
- Fire broke out shortly after 20:00 on Wednesday at a home on 57 between 152 and 153 in the Los Hornos neighborhood of La Plata.
- The victims were identified as Celeste Villalba, 27, and her daughters Pilar, 7, and Aitana, 4, whose bodies were found on a bed beneath a front window after the blaze was extinguished.
- A 17-year-old relative escaped with a 3-year-old boy and alerted authorities as the fire spread through the interior.
- Officials opened an "averiguación de causales de muerte" under La Plata’s Fiscalía Nº16, and forensic examinations and autopsies have not yet been released.
- Based on survivor accounts, investigators’ main hypothesis is that a 3-year-old playing with a lighter accidentally ignited clothing that reached a mattress, while rapid flames and dense smoke hindered rescue.