LAKE STEVENS, Wash. — Arson is likely to blame for this morning's fire that destroyed a duplex in Lake Stevens but police still have not been able to question the homeowner.
We were there when -- distraught and crying -- she returned home. Lake Stevens police say she left moments before a fire gutted her home and the unit next to her and that's suspicious. So is — they say -- the fact the fire started and then spread so quickly.
Jessica Reed and her boyfriend rent from the woman; they live on the other side of the duplex she owns.
"Oh God, I still can't stop shaking,” Jessica told us, standing outside her boyfriend’s pickup truck with her two dogs inside.
Jessica and her boyfriend weren't inside when the fire broke out but the dogs were.
“Basically they were trapped. She was in a room with a shut door and he was in his crate,” she said of French bulldog and chocolate Lab.
Police and firefighters rescued them and the homeowner's dog which was left in her backyard.
"It was a very scared pit bull. The fire guys were worried it was going to get hurt,” said Cmdr. Dennis Taylor with the Lake Stevens Police Department.
Jessica says there have been recent run-ins with the homeowner.
“She went to our camper before; she goes into our backyard,” Jessica told us.
She says they've called police several times and officers tell us they've responded to "disturbances" here before. We put in a records request for all police reports made at this address on 122nd Avenue NE in the last year. Still — Friday’s fire was shocking.
"The flames went up pretty high, yeah, it cleared the roof I'd say a good 40 feet at one time,” said neighbor Bill Myers, who called 991. “The black smoke was just billowing."
Police say the homeowner was not in the right state of mind to answer their questions. She wasn't arrested; she was taken to the hospital.
The renters tell us they were already moving out at the end of the month but now they have no idea how much of what they own was damaged by smoke.