Community steps up for boy who lost mother, sisters in house fire: 'She would have wanted this'

An East Texas teenager is in the unenviable position of living the rest of his life without his mother.

Fourteen-year-old Kanon Shively was the lone survivor of a house fire in Trinity County that killed Emily Heater as well as Kanon’s younger siblings, Braylee and Annie. 

Houston CBS affiliate KHOU reported that the boy, whose father succumbed to brain cancer earlier this year, is receiving help from his community and the friends his mother left behind.

Rebecca Michalsky told KHOU that she and Heater were really close friends since high school and kept contact even when the latter moved away from the Houston area. According to Michalsky, the family was full of love.

“They were just ... they were precious,” she recalled to the station, adding that Kanon was “a good brother” to his late sisters.

As devastated as they are by the losses of their friend and her daughters, Michalsky and her friends vow to continue to be there for Kanon.

Michalsky told the station that the fire left the boy with just the pajamas he wore when he escaped the blaze.

“He does not have anything,” she said in the report. “She would have wanted this and that's what keeps a smile on our face and keeps us going – is knowing that we're taking care of her boy.”

KHOU reported that other friends of Heater set up a GoFundMe page to cover funeral expenses with leftover money going toward a bank account opened to help Kanon.

The page has a $50,000 goal, and as of Wednesday, $24,010 has been raised.

A charity softball tournament for the teen is slated for Nov. 5 in La Porte, per a post on Facebook.