Elderly residents – some in wheelchairs and some dependent on oxygen tanks – were blinded by deadly smoke as they tried to escape an assisted-living facility in Fall River, Massachusetts, which caught fire Sunday evening.

A blaze at a Massachusetts assisted-living home Sunday killed a musician, a secretary, a veteran Army sharpshooter and six other people.

Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quin III identified the 9 victims on Monday as 64-year-old Rui Albernaz, 61-year-old Ronald Codega, 69-year-old Margaret Duddy, 78-year-old Robert King, 71-year-old Kim Mackin, 78-year-old Richard Rochon, and 86-year-old Eleanor Willett.

"I need bodies and ladders," a Fall River firefighter also requested during the frantic search and rescue operation.

You could have had 100 firefighters show up on that scene and it wouldn’t have been enough,” the fire chief said at a news briefing outside the fire department’s headquarters Tuesday.

WBZ-TV 's I-Team has found Dennis Etzkorn, the owner of Gabriel House in Fall River, has legal controversies in his past.