Atlanta fire officials continue to investigate the blaze that killed the Rev. Arthur Allen, controversial pastor of the House of Prayer who ordered whippings of misbehaving children during worship.
Investigators have narrowed the source of the fire to a laundry room, but can’t narrow it further without additional testing on appliances and electrical wires, fire department spokeswoman Janet Ward said Saturday.
“There is no indication that the fire was anything other than accidental,” she said.
Allen, 81, died last Monday when fire gutted a home in the 1100 block of Lookout Avenue in northwest Atlanta. Five children who were in the home escaped and were not injured, Ward said.
The nondenominational House of Prayer, which Allen founded, gained national attention in 2001 when social workers took almost 50 children and put them in foster care and group homes following abuse allegations.
Allen was convicted in 2002 of cruelty to children and served two years in prison before his release in 2005. Before being incarcerated, he was a fugitive for five months. He was captured in Cobb County in August 2003.
—Staff writer Michelle Shaw contributed to this report.
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