Investigators returned to the scene of a deadly Cobb County fire with a police dog Monday.
An incoming South Cobb High freshman was found dead in a bedroom Saturday as the house went up in flames, Channel 2 Action News reported. Rescuers knew immediately the fire wasn’t the cause of death and quickly called the case a homicide investigation.
Detectives have worked the scene and case nonstop since the fire. Neighbors remain desperate to learn what really happened and how the young girl died.
“I wonder how did it start and what really happened,” neighbor Yvonne Holloman-Riddle told Channel 2. “To have a daughter and lose a daughter like that before she got to live a life because she was just getting ready to go to high school, it’s very sad.”
The usually quiet Shadowridge Drive community watched two days after the fire as detectives searched the next-door driveway, where the dead teen’s stepfather parked his car after pulling out of the burning house.
The stepfather, who has not been named, left the scene of the fatal fire in the back of a police car, but has not yet been charged, according to Channel 2.
A teenage boy escaped from the blaze through a window was taken to a hospital with cuts on his hands.
Neighbors told police the stepfather was acting erratically as his home burned.
VIDEO: Police investigate Cobb County house fire as homicide
“Crazy bent out of shape and upset, just crazy,” witness Robert McNelley told Channel 2. “One of the police officers asked me where he was at and I said up there in his car.”
Police took a gas can as evidence from the scene.
Court documents show a history of domestic violence between the husband and wife who lived in the home, including an incident involving the teenage daughter, Channel 2 reported.
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