One dead in suspicious house fire By JANE MCHUGH Staff Writer
A death in a house fire in Collington Station is considered suspicious, and is officially being investigated as a homicide, according to Prince George's County Fire Department officials, the Blade-News learned at press time.
Neighbors called 911 around 4:45 a.m. Tuesday after seeing smoke and flames coming from the two-story house on Jenkins Ridge Road, said county fire department spokesman Mark Brady.
It started in a second-floor bedroom in the 15300 block of Jenkins Ridge Road, where a charred body was found, he said.
The body, burned beyond recognition, had not been identified at press time.
Neighbors, however, believe it was the woman who lived there with her son and daughter, who are teenagers or young adults. They weren't home during the fire, neighbors said.
"She was in my kitchen a week ago. She just came into the house and we were shooting the breeze on a Saturday afternoon," said Christian Harriott, who lives across the street from the burned home.
"I prayed she wasn't in there when I saw the fire."
The house had a sign in the front that it was up for auction, a possible foreclosure.
Police were at the scene as well as numerous recruits from the county police academy. They were helping sift through the charred evidence by picking it up and dipping it in large buckets of water to speed along the investigation and also as part of a learning process, Brady said.
"This is a joint investigation between the police department's homicide unit and fire investigators," he said. "It's common whenever we have a fire with a fatality. It's not clear to us at this point what the cause of the fire is, so both agreed to be involved in the investigation. It's a mystery what could have occurred."
Brady wouldn't confirm who lived there, or whether the dead person was alone.
The first floor sustained smoke and water damage. It was the second floor that became engulfed in flames.
"It looked like a big inferno," Harriott said.
Added neighborhood resident Bijan Whitley, 13, "Flames 8 feet high were coming out of the roof."
The fire on the second floor was too dangerous for firefighters to attack by venturing inside; instead they hosed it down from the outside, Brady said. "When it was safe, we re-entered and completed extinguishing it. A deceased (person) was located in the second floor bedroom above the garage," he said.
"We can't go into a whole lot of detail because there's still a lot of unknowns and there are certainly things we like to keep close to the vest in the investigation phase," he said.
