Police still waiting to name dead woman

POLICE were today still trying to trace the next of kin of an elderly woman who died in a fire at her Suffolk home.

The pensioner's body was found in the kitchen of her flat at Mildenhall yesterday after a neighbour who smashed down his elderly neighbour's door in a desperate bid to save her from her burning flat was forced back by billowing acrid smoke.

Brave Hein Muller managed to raise the alarm and got other residents out of the converted Mildenhall house but despite getting into the woman's flat he was forced to turn back.

Fire crews managed to rescue the woman, who was in her 60s and known to neighbours only by her first name, Irene, but she is believed to have died shortly afterwards.

Mr Muller, who lives in the apartment above the dead woman's first floor flat, said he was alerted to the fire when he felt the heat coming through his living room floor but was beaten back by heavy, black smoke when he broke down the woman's door.

His actions were praised by fire chiefs who admitted he could have been “added to the casualties” if he had entered the smoke-logged apartment where the woman was found lying on her kitchen floor.”