Fire officials are investigating a suspicious blaze early Wednesday that destroyed a northwest Atlanta house a day after the homeowner reported an attempted firebombing.
No injuries were reported in the fire, which destroyed the single-story, wood frame house on North Avenue at Charlotte Place, west of West Lake Avenue.
Atlanta fire Lt. Jerry Crosby said crews arrived around 6:30 a.m. to find the home “fully involved” in flames.
Crosby said that while the cause of the fire had not been determined, it “could be related” to an earlier incident in which the homeowner reported to police that an incendiary device was thrown through a window.
Elmore Statham has owned the house since 1963, and his great-grandson was living in the home.
Statham said that his great-grandson, Titavis Harkness, came home early Tuesday morning to find that “someone tried to throw some kind of firebomb through the window. It had been burning and went out.”
“It was thrown either over the weekend or Monday,” Harkness told the AJC. “We seen a burnt piece of rag on the ground, smelled like gas.”
Harkness said that after the earlier incident, he spent Tuesday night with his girlfriend, and returned to the house early Wednesday to find it engulfed in flames.
He said he has no idea why anyone would target him. “I don’t have no problems with no one,” he said.
Neighbor Denise Smith said she heard a commotion at the victim’s house around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.
“I just heard like a pounding on the back door, like someone was trying to get into their house,” Smith said. “I should have called the police, but I didn’t.”
Mimi Burns and her five children live across the street from Harkness. She said recent crime in the neighborhood has her concerned.
“I’ve lived there three months and my house has been broken into twice already,” Burns said.
Burns worried that Wednesday’s fire was “right across the street from my house. Whoever did that would do it to my dang house.”
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