Eight people have died in a house fire near Tulsa, Oklahoma, that police say they are investigating as a homicide.
Authorities said that neighbours reported the fire at about 4pm in Broken Arrow, Tulsa’s biggest suburb that is home to almost 115,000 people. Police provided scant details of what happened or who was killed.
“Preliminary reports are that this is going to be a homicide investigation,” said Ethan Hutchins, the Broken Arrow police spokesperson. “We’re still focused on … the fire and also investigate what happened to these victims.“
He declined to comment on any search for a suspect but said authorities did not believe an immediate threat to the public existed.
Agents from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were called to help investigate, Hutchins said, calling it a “complex scene”.
Catelin Powers said she was driving with her children when she saw a column of smoke near her house, so she drove to investigate.
“When I got closer to the house, I saw smoke pouring out from the very top of the house, which looked like maybe the attic,” she told The Associated Press.
Two men and a woman on her phone were standing in front of the house, Powers said, when another man emerged from the front door dragging an apparently unconscious, unresponsive woman. “Her arms were flopped to her sides,” she said. Suspecting the woman was dead, Powers said she drove on so her children would be spared the sight.
“Understandably, this is a shock to Broken Arrow. It’s a safe city,” Huthcins said. “And so, we’re asking the community to please pray and come together because this is something that we don’t experience as a city very often.”