While investigators continued sifting through the charred remains of a Cherokee County home Thursday, friends of one of the three victims struggled to make sense of the tragedy.
Three people, believed to be parents and their 19-year-old daughter, were found dead after a fire that destroyed their Ball Ground home early Wednesday. By the time firefighters arrived at Spriggs Trail, the split-level home had already collapsed and was fully engulfed, investigators said.
The Norrells, Ricky, 49, his wife, Darlene, 46, and their daughter, Lindsey, 19, are presumed dead, but official confirmation will come following autopsies performed by the GBI, according to Lt. Jay Baker with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office. Baker said deputies and firefighters remained on scene overnight and into Thursday, searching for clues regarding the cause of the blaze.
"This is honestly one of the last things I would have ever, ever expected to happen," Gretchen Pierce, a former classmate of Lindsey Norrell at Creekview High School, told the AJC.
Calling Lindsey her best friend, Ashley Jacks said the two met in fifth grade and had been close ever since. Jacks said she had been to the Norrells' home several times over the years, and that the family was a close one that spent a lot of time together.
"Her mom was her best friend," Jacks said.
At Creekview, Lindsey Norrell was a popular student with friends in different grades, Lindsey Gibson, who will be a senior at Creekview this year, told the AJC. Lindsey Norrell was the type of student who returned to high school to visit her favorite teachers, her friends said. And while in school, she participated in the Friends Club, which volunteered time with special needs children.
Recently, Lindsey Norrell had gotten engaged to her boyfriend, a 2012 graduate of Cherokee County High School. The pair was together constantly, including about two weeks ago at the mall when Pierce saw them.
"I knew she got engaged and that was a big deal," Pierce said. "She also went to the beach with her family. She had been doing her thing. Being normal. She was with her fiance. She was happy as ever."
Lindsey, who was taking classes at Chattahoochee Technical College and wanted to become a nurse, grew up in Cherokee County and considered herself a country girl, friends said. Since the fire, her friends have used Facebook and Twitter to share their memories and prayers about the family's presumed deaths and remember the sweet girl who was always smiling.
"She was a Southern belle," Jacks said. "She liked everybody. And everybody liked her."
Relatives of the Norrell family declined to comment when contacted by the AJC.
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