LYNNWOOD, Wash. — Thursday in court the Snohomish County fire marshal said he can’t rule out arson as the cause of a Lynnwood house fire that nearly killed a woman.
David Morgan is on trial for attempted murder after prosecutors say beat his ex-wife Brenda Welch and then lit her on fire inside his house on November 16, 2014.
Wednesday we heard firefighters describe the fire that quickly consumed the back of the house as behaving like an arson with a large fireball seemingly coming out of nowhere.
Thursday, the doctor who examined Welch's brain scans the night of the fire testified the facial and skull fractures were so severe and in so many different places on her head that it was highly unlikely they came from a fall or a single blow.
Firefighters found her unconscious in the garage and she was in a coma for weeks.
"It's possible the fracture pattern on the left side of her head could have been caused by the force that created the fracture pattern on the right side of her head?" Morgan's defense asked the doctor on the stand.
"Absolutely not," he responded.
But the majority of the testimony came from the fire marshal and focused on whether the fire was intentionally set.
"Paramedics noted an obvious odor of gasoline on her clothing," fire marshal Edwin Hardesty explained in court.
He used special equipment on Welch's clothes to verify that but he said he couldn't find evidence of that in the house. In court he talked through more than 100 photos of the charred remains of that house.
With each picture Hardesty was asked if he found an accidental cause of the fire and each time he answered the same -- "I did not."
That included the dining room where Hardesty is certain the fire started. That room was almost completely empty.
"The only conclusion I can draw is that there was some type of fuel added to the room, an accelerant added to the room," Hardesty told the jury.
Because he couldn't find remnants of that, though the fire cause was ruled undetermined. Still -- "I can't rule out that the fire was not intentionally set," Hardesty concluded.
Welch was supposed to testify Thursday but time ran out. She's likely to take the stand Monday and face David Morgan for the first time since the fire. Their 8-year-old daughter is expected to testify as well.