HAVERHILL, Mass. — When Victor Oliviera went downstairs yesterday morning, he came face to face with tragedy.

His good friend, 6-year-old Daquan Davis, had died in a fire at 22 Warren St. overnight.

"When I heard that he died, I started crying," said Victor, 9, a third-grader at Golden Hill School, where Daquan was in the first grade.

Daquan and his aunt, Mary Pina, 50, apparently were trapped on an upper floor or attic of the house where the fire is believed to have started, state Fire Marshal Stephen Coan said. The other people in the house, including Pina's husband and several other children, were able to get out safely.

The Friday night blaze was the second fatal fire in the area in one week. Linda Cahalane and her son, Sean, a former student at Whittier Vocational Technical High School in Haverhill, died in a fire at their Lawrence home early Monday morning.

The cause of the Warren Street fire remains under investigation, Coan said, although a neighbor said Pina's husband told her it started as a result of a spark from a television that was knocked over by kids playing.

The chain-link fence in front of the house was draped with charred and ripped clothing yesterday. A wreath of artificial red and white flowers sat atop one of the posts. Neighbors had knotted a teddy bear holding two flower bouquets to the fence.

Sequoyah Couture, 10, and Jonah Farley, 9, rode their bicycles to the scene of the fire to leave two stuffed animals on the steps of the house where they played numerous times with Daquan.

Sequoyah, who had known Daquan since he was born, even brought a note that his mother had written for him. He said he was too emotional to write it himself. He cried as he read the note, "For the best friend a guy could ever have."

Jonah's mother, Vanessa Rivera, worked with Pina for more than a year at Oxford Nursing Home in Haverhill, where Pina was a certified nursing assistant.

"She was very loving with the patients," Rivera said. "If she was on break or was about to go home and a patient called her, she always tended to them."

Rivera and others who knew Pina described her as a friendly, cheerful and loving person.

"They were very good people. They were all about the kids," she said.

"It's so ironic and strange," said Sequoyah's mother, Amber Chaney. "God has a plan for all of us, even if we don't understand it. All we have to do is say a prayer and keep our faith."

The Rev. Joseph Woodbury, Pina's pastor for the past six years, opened his church, Portland Street Baptist, yesterday so family members, neighbors and friends would have a place to gather and offer each other support.

"We're trying to find our way through what happened," he said. "(Pina) had an innocence about her, and that innocence makes it a lot harder to understand why we lost her."

Woodbury said the church is collecting shoes and toys for Daquan's siblings. They can be dropped off at the church at 29 Portland St.

The fire started at 9 p.m. Friday, and though firefighters knocked it down quickly, they could not save the people trapped inside.

"It was a textbook fire as far as fighting the fire," Deputy fire Chief Brian Moriarty said. "But they were trapped in a really bad place."

Red Cross workers on the scene said three families lived in the 21âÑ2-story house. Neighbors said some of the residents were disabled.

Moriarty said Haverhill has not had a fatal fire in at least several years.

"The last one I remember was on River Street, and it was seven to nine years ago," he said.

The house sustained relatively minor damage, Moriarty said. The flames left a gaping hole in the front of the house on the top floor. Firefighters also hacked a small hole on one side of the roof to ventilate the fire.

Across the street from the fire scene yesterday, Rubens Silva and his family gathered around their porch. He shook his head in disbelief and said in Portuguese, "O Dios (Oh God)."

"I saw her every day walking her dog," he said. He remembered Daquan riding his bike throughout the neighborhood.

The Pina family left the building with little clothing on, and some were barefoot. Chaney, who lives nearby, provided blankets and shoes that her children no longer use.

"I feel awful for them," she said.

Staff writer Margo Sullivan and the Associated Press contributed to this report.