and was found 12 feet from the front door.
Who was now?
According to the local CBS affiliate, little Riley Miller was found in the bedroom where the fire began - he never made it into the front room from which his mother and stepfather fled.
Also, according to their report the police and firemen arrived on the scene at the same time, and firemen in full gear were forced to retreat from the front door of the home because of the heat.
While the consensus of the thread may ultimately be that the firemen were cowards or slackers, just as the consensus seems to be that the police were cowards and brutes, to me this suggests that the situation was already out of hand before the stepfather tried to run in.