FORREST CITY, Ark. — Limakie Crawford still couldn’t believe the fire that raged through one Forrest City apartment complex didn’t reach her home.
“All the smoke was roaring this way. Just thick, black-gray smoke,” she recalled.
Pictures taken during the height of the fire showed four apartment burning out of control.
Four people escaped, but Ruth Jones, an elderly woman, was trapped in her unit.
Two Forrest City firefighters braved the heat to rescue her.
“Immediately to your right is a bedroom. It’s not really a hallway; it’s just a little area probably three or four foot before the bedroom. She was there, laying face down,” Assistant Chief Anthony Renigar said.
She was taken to the burn center at Regional Medical Center in Memphis with burns to over 50 percent of her body. Unfortunately, she didn’t make it; she died Oct. 25 in the hospital.
Investigators charged Vernice Johnson with arson, battery, and criminal mischief.
“There were witnesses that gave statements that she had set the apartment on fire,” Renigar told WREG.
He said Johnson reportedly had a disagreement with someone who lived next door to Jones.
Investigators found evidence of an accelerant around the back of the man’s apartment.
People who live in Dawson Homes know Jones as a church-going woman who should never have become a victim.
“This lady, a sweet lady who minds her own business,” one neighbor said. “Walk, do whatever, and she the one got hurt. An innocent got hurt.”
