Kimora Lee Simmons and her family are safe after their Los Angeles home caught on fire.
“The kids and I are all fine. I cannot express enough my deepest gratitude to the numerous battalions, ladders and units that attended to us for any hours together,” Simmons, 48, wrote via Instagram Story on Saturday, December 2. “[They] quite possibly saved our lives. THANK YOU! 🙏 ❤️ 🥺.”
The Baby Phat designer uploaded several images of the LAFD officers on the scene, dressed in their gear putting out a blaze and smoke inside Simmons’ fireplace.
While Simmons did not reveal what had occurred or who was home at the time of the fire, she is a mother of five. Kimora shares daughters Ming, 23, and Aoki, 21, with ex-husband Russell Simmons, to whom she was married between 1998 and 2009. Kimora later welcomed son Kenzo, 14, with ex Djimon Hounsou and son Wolfe, 8, with husband Tim Leissner. Kimora also adopted son Gary, now 13, in January 2020.
“I’m blessed and super fortunate to have a boy like [Gary] and it’s been a very painless sensation. He just dropped in like he was born there,” the proud mom exclusively told Us Weekly the following March. “We’re a big group, a loud group. Everyone’s always screaming to me, ‘Mom, mom help me do this, do that’ all the time. ‘Mom, mom, mom.’ So he, in that sense, has blended right in.”
Their family raised eyebrows in June after Ming penned a Father’s Day tribute to Kimora without mentioning Russell, 66, who then seemingly alleged that his ex-wife had interfered in his parental relationship.
“My father is not well, for years, he needs help and won’t accept that he refuses to acknowledge he is not himself,” Aoki chimed in via a since-deleted Instagram note and accusing Russell of verbal abuse. “He has threatened and bullied my sister, my grandma … He lashes out at ANYONE who does not say, ‘Ooh Russell everything is fine.’ Well it’s not fine.”
While Russell fervently denied the allegations before apologizing to his daughters, Kimora had Ming and Aoki’s backs. To this day, Aoki doesn’t “regret” speaking out.
“Part of it was already out there. There were reasons I thought it was reasonable to publish because it was playing out in, like, a silent bubble,” she told Teen Vogue in a September profile, insisting that they have a “normal family” despite the public drama.
