A sleepover turned into a fiery nightmare Saturday as a predawn blaze at a Newnan house killed a mother and four young girls.
Nautica McCrary, an 11-year-old girl who escaped through a bedroom window, was treated and released from a local hospital Saturday morning for smoke inhalation. She told relatives that her mother, 27-year-old Alonna McCrary, could have gotten out but she stayed inside the burning house to try rescuing the younger girls, who were spending the night together.
“She just insisted she wasn’t going to let them babies go,” said Roxanne Arnold of Newnan, who said she is the 11-year-old’s aunt. “That’s what I applaud her for. She was risking her own life to get the babies.”
The children killed were identified as: Eriel McCrary, 5, Messiah White, 3, Nikia White, 2, and McKenzie Florence, who was either 1 or 2 years old, according to the state Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner’s Office.
Several of the girls were related. Alonna McCrary was mother to Nautica, Eriel and Nikia, according to the insurance commissioner’s office. The three youngest girls shared the same father, Arnold said.
Investigators believe the fire in the Coweta County town, about 40 miles southwest of Atlanta, started because of a faulty breaker in an electrical panel in the den of the single-story brick home. The fire was ruled accidental.
A neighbor called to report the blaze shortly after 1 a.m. By the time firefighters arrived, Newnan police Chief Buster Meadows said, the house was completely engulfed in flames.
The 11-year-old, whose nickname is Molly, told relatives that all the girls were asleep in her bedroom when her mother ran in screaming, “Molly, get up!” and somehow busted out the bedroom window.
“She couldn’t see anything, they were bumping into each other,” Arnold said. “They had to feel around and she was hollering and screaming. Her mother kept telling her to get out.”
At some point, a neighbor pulled Molly through the window to safety, and she passed out in the front yard. Arnold said she waited until after Molly was released from the hospital to break the news that her mother and two sisters had died.
Relatives said Alonna McCrary often got the girls together at her house for weekend sleepovers and outings. She wanted the girls to grow up close, Arnold said.
Arnold said Alonna McCrary called her landlord a few days earlier about getting electrical problems repaired. The man came over Thursday or Friday, but didn’t fix the problem, Arnold said.
McCrary’s cousin, Tamara Terrell, said she had lived in the house for nearly four years before McCrary moved in. Terrell cried as she sat with others across the street and recalled having problems with the home’s gas and electrical system before she moved out in January. Terrell said McCrary moved into the house the next month.
But landlord Glenn Marlowe of Moreland said, “There was never an electrical problem in the house, period.” He said he hadn’t owned the home for very long and couldn’t provide additional information.
Neighbor Jemeka Beadles said Eriel had recently graduated from pre-kindergarten. “Her mom had just put all her little graduation pictures on Facebook with her cap and gown on,” she said. “It seems unreal, it just seems so unreal.”
Arnold said her niece Molly went to Evans Middle School. The girl lost everything in the fire, but some friends from Molly’s school have already talked about taking her shopping to replace some of her belongings, she said.
Ralph Hudgens, Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire commissioner, said there was a smoke alarm in the house, but it was so badly damaged from the fire that it was impossible to tell whether it was functioning.
“Really, right now, the whole state is mourning the loss of these four children and the mother,” Hudgens said. “We’re all very saddened by this.”
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