Lakeside

A 2-year-old girl died late Friday after a fire--apparently ignited by her 3-year-old brother playing with a cigarette lighter--swept through her family’s apartment, firefighters said.

Melissa Madden was asleep in her room at 9:55 a.m. when the fire broke out, said Battalion Chief Chuck Whitlock of the Lakeside Fire Department. The child’s mother told firefighters that she escaped through a window with her son after being driven from the apartment by heat and smoke.

Melissa was unconscious and not breathing when she was rescued by firefighters. She was flown by a Sheriff’s Department helicopter to UC San Diego Medical Center, where she was found to have second- and third-degree burns over 90% of her body.

A spokesman for the San Diego County coroner’s office said the child died at the hospital Friday evening.

It took 25 firefighters about 30 minutes to control the fire, which gutted two apartment units and caused smoke damage to a third, Whitlock said. Damage was estimated at $125,000.