CLEVELAND - Cleveland fire investigators are trying to determine the cause of a fire that killed a woman and left two families homeless.

"I heard stuff falling, I wasn't sure if it was downstairs or in the attic," said upstairs resident Lillian Cruz.

Just before 7:00 Tuesday morning, Lillian Cruz and her young son were asleep on the second floor of a duplex on Clybourne Avenue on Cleveland's west side.

"I stayed in bed a little while longer and then more stuff started to fall, and then smoke was coming through my bedroom vent, and I just grabbed my cover off my bed and ran in my son's room and grabbed him, his room smelled worse than mine," she said.

Lillian, who is pregnant, then thought of her neighbors, two sisters, who recently moved downstairs.

"I just ran downstairs and tried knocking on her door and no one answered, it was smokey, it was bad at their door," said Cruz.

One sister was at work at the time. The coroner has not yet positively identified the woman found dead in a downstairs bedroom, but family members fear it could be 23-year old Nicolette Carter.

"Bottom of my heart I hope it's not her though for real, 'cause she still got a daughter to take care of, you know what I'm saying, her daughter at the house right now," said her brother Ike Chambers.

"She was a very likable, loving person, very respectful and she has a daughter," said he aunt Barbara Deskins.

Family members say the first floor room where the body was found is the room "Nicky" slept in. Her three year old daughter spent the night with her grandmother.

"She's too young to know what's going on, she just walking around the house like where my momma at? she see everybody else crying and she don't know what to think," said Chambers.