Family mourns loss of child, father from CO poisoning

EAST POINT, Ga. — A family is in mourning after a child and his father died from carbon monoxide exposure in an East Point home Thursday afternoon.

"I mean, what a way to go. I don't know whether or not he suffered or how much he suffered," said Elaine Hardy, who wonders about the last moments of her 11-year-old grandson's death.

Sederick Baliem III, 11, and his father, Sederick Baliem, 40, died of carbon monoxide poisoning in their East Point home on Graywall Street.

Hardy remembered her grandson she called Tre.

"He had the deepest dimple, and for me to go up there and see him lying like that, it's just unbearable," Hardy said.

Around 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday, police and fire responders rushed to the home to find a family overcome by carbon monoxide fumes from a generator placed inside of the home.

Two other children survived, ages 2 and 13, but their grandmother cannot get over how preventable the deaths were.

"Use common sense. You're not supposed to have a generator on inside your home. And have one of those detectors," Hardy said.

Carbon monoxide detectors are just as important as smoke and fire detectors. They alert you with a high pitch alarm when carbon monoxide gas levels get dangerous.

"Carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless and it doesn't produce anything visual," said East Point Fire Chief Rosemary Cloud. "In fact, it just lulls you into a sleep so it's extremely dangerous and the only way that any of us would know, is if we had a monitor inside the house."

Members of the East Point Fire Department went door-to-door in the neighborhood installing CO detectors and warning residents of the dangers of carbon monoxide.

"You should never have a situation where you would bring a generator inside of the home and these people were just trying to stay warm," Cloud said.

The home had been without power since Monday. Now, a growing memorial to the two lives lost is forming on the front lawn.

WSBTV