The Shinyanga Regional Fire and Rescue Force operations officer, Mr Edward Selemani, confirmed the incident and said preliminary investigations indicated the fire was caused by an electrical fault.
Shinyanga. A 33-year-old woman, identified as Agness James, a resident of Mwasele Street in Kambarage Ward, Shinyanga Municipality, has died after returning to a burning house to retrieve her money.
Witnesses to the incident, which occurred at around 1.00am on December 16, 2025, said they heard people screaming for help before rushing to the scene.
Speaking to The Citizen's sister newspaper Mwananchi on Tuesday, December 16, 2025, at Mwasele Street, the deceased’s husband, Mr Vincent Kilocha, said he noticed unusual movement in the sitting room before discovering smoke.
"I felt as if something was moving in the living room. When I woke up to check, I saw smoke coming from there. I woke up my wife and children, and we all rushed outside. I then went to ask for help from a neighbour,” he said.
Mr Kilocha explained that after ensuring his family was safe, he went to seek assistance from neighbours by knocking on their gates, as he had left his phone inside the house during the rescue.
"When I returned and asked the children where their mother was, they told me she had gone back inside to collect her money. By then, the fire had grown too strong for me to go back in. We called the Fire and Rescue Force, who managed to put out the fire, but everything had already been destroyed,” he added.
A neighbour, Mr David Johnson, said the fire was already intense when he arrived at the scene.
"By the time I got there, the fire was huge. People were asking about the woman of the house, saying she had gone back inside. We tried to extinguish the fire using sand and water, but it kept spreading,” he said.
He added that firefighters later arrived and extinguished the blaze, after which the woman’s body was found inside the house.
Police officers took the body for further investigations.
Mwasele Street chairperson, Mr Cosmas Lucas, said he received the information at around 3.00am and rushed to the scene, where the fire was still raging.
"When we tried calling the Fire and Rescue Force, the phone lines were unstable, so we decided to go and report the incident in person using a motorcycle,” he said.
The Shinyanga Regional Fire and Rescue Force operations officer, Mr Edward Selemani, confirmed the incident and said preliminary investigations indicated the fire was caused by an electrical fault.
Mr Selemani urged residents to regularly replace old electrical wiring and avoid connecting too many appliances to a single power source.
“We received the report and arrived at the scene at around 3.00am, where we managed to extinguish the fire. After putting it out, we recovered the body of the homeowner, who had already died and was found clutching the money she had returned to collect,” he said.
