‘Everyone knew my mom’: Family mourns Northwest Berkeley fire victim

The house in the 1000 block of Cedar Street that burned in the early hours of Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. Credit: Lance Knobel Credit: Lance Knobel

The 61-year-old Berkeley woman killed in a house fire Monday was a city native, an alum of city schools and a fiercely loyal mother and grandmother, her daughter, Tequilla Warner, said.

Gwendolyn McNeal, who went by Gwen, lived for a short time in a home on Prince Street when she was a child, before her family moved to the Cedar Street home in 1974. Warner grew up there as well, and Warner’s son Joshua became the fourth generation of the family to have lived there, if only part of the time.

“She helped me raise my son, my son lived there most of his life, he was back and forth between my house” and the home that burned Monday, Warner said. “That was her world. She loved being a grandmother.”

Tequilla Warner, standing, with Gwen McNeal, at a Freddie Jackson concert in Oakland in October. McNeal was killed in a house fire in Berkeley on Feb. 3, 2025. Credit: Tequilla Warner

Warner has set up a GoFundMe to try to defray some of the costs of holding a funeral and burial for McNeal, and to visit her grandmother, who she said suffered burns across 30% of her body in the same fire and is at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose. There is a memorial to McNeal set up near the home’s rear entrance on 10th Street at Cedar for those who may want to pay respects.

An alum of Berkeley High School, McNeal went back frequently to the campus for Joshua’s school events — “every school performance, every teacher conference, everything you can think of for my son,” Warner said. “Every teacher, every principal knows her … everyone knew my mom.”

McNeal worked as an accountant and had several odd jobs too. But she grappled with disability and dementia later in life, and even walking became a challenge following a recent gallbladder surgery.

“They don’t really know what happened, the surgery went really well, but when I picked her up she just couldn’t walk,” Warner said.

Warner had become McNeal’s in-home caretaker, and had gone to the Cedar Street house just the day before the fire broke out, as she did every day, to give McNeal her medicine, spend some time with her and make sure she had everything she needed.

Due to McNeal’s dementia, “the last few days before then, she was having episodes,” Warner said. “She thought I was stealing her money, stealing her cards.” But that Sunday, McNeal was clearer and at peace. She told Warner she loved her, and cried “happy tears” over the memory of her late sister Beverly, Warner’s late aunt. Except for Joshua and a cousin of Warner’s, the whole extended family was over that day. “It was a good day,” Warner said.

Just a few hours later Warner, who spent Sunday night at a friend’s house, would wake up to a flurry of voicemails from emergency workers. Monday morning, much of the family that had gotten together Sunday evening was in an intensive care unit at Highlands Hospital, including McNeal, who had died.

“It was just something out of a movie, something I never thought I would have to deal with,” Warner said. “I don’t think it’s hit yet.”

Grandmother saved others in family

Officially, the precise source of ignition was still under investigation Friday, according to the Berkeley Fire Department, who said the blaze had caused $100,000 worth of damage. Warner said she believes the fire must have been caused by a portable heater in her grandmother Lovie McNeal’s room that caught fire right near the bed where Lovie was sleeping, seriously burning her.

Despite the burns, Lovie McNeal was able to muscle her way through an adjoining bathroom to pound on the door to the next bedroom, where Warner’s aunt and uncle Nicole and D’Gregg Johnson slept, waking them before collapsing herself, Warner said.

“She’s literally the reason everybody in the house isn’t dead,” Warner said. “She’s strong.”

Gwendolyn McNeal’s room had been the other direction, through the home’s kitchen, Warner said. The elder McNeal “wouldn’t have been able to go get her and go to my aunt.”

A family dog, Nico, was also killed in the fire.

The Johnsons were treated for smoke inhalation and have been able to leave the hospital, but Lovie McNeal remains in intensive care in San Jose, Warner said. She is sedated still, but stable, Warner said.