A mother’s early morning snack of tortilla chips cooked in hot oil on an outdoor propane stove near highly combustible material is suspected of leading to the ignition of a deadly mobile home fire that claimed the lives of two pre-teen girls in Murrieta.
Stacey Hales habit of cooking with hot oil had already resulted in a prior kitchen fire and repeatedly scorched an outdoor carport, leading her partner, Adam Keenan, to warn Hales that she could “kill somebody one day,” a Murrieta police officer wrote in a sworn statement.
On Dec. 20, Hales failed to turn off a propane tank, and may not have turned off a burner, after cooking tortilla chips in hot oil on a stove underneath a wooden carport near vehicles and an overhanging pine tree at their home at 41690 Knight Drive, the officer wrote.
Just before 4:45 a.m., a blaze ignited by flames from the left burner of the outdoor stove quickly engulfed the carport, mobile home, three vehicles, two outbuildings and the adjacent pine tree. Firefighters first tried to search the home for trapped residents, but quickly switched to a defensive posture in order to extinguish the flames. It took crews about 45 minutes.
Afterward, the bodies of two girls — 12-year-old Emma Hales and 11-year-old Abby Hales were found in the home. Their mother and father and Ashley, Emma’s twin, were injured, but had managed to escape the flames. An unspecified number of dogs also died in the fire.
Both the mother and father admitted to regularly using methamphetamine, which was found in their system after the fire, an officer wrote in a statement attached to an arrest warrant.
There weren’t any working fire alarms in the mobile home to alert the parents and their children to the rapidly growing flames, authorities said. And the main entrance and exit to the mobile home was partially blocked by dog crates and other stored items, the officer wrote.
The mother told police she was able to exit the mobile home by herself after the fire broke out. But she was unable to go back in due to heat and smoke, the officer wrote.
The father was able to escape through a bedroom window with Ashley, the officer wrote. The other two girls — Emma and Abby — were left in the home.
The dangerous cooking practices combined with the obstructed doorway, impaired parents and non-working smoke alarms “directly contributed to the children being placed in a situation where escape was delayed or impossible,” the officer wrote.
Both parents are now facing criminal charges.
Stacey Hales, 46, is accused of reckless burning of an inhabited structure. Both she and Keenan, 43, are also facing child endangerment and drug-related charges. It was not clear from online court records whether either of them has hired or been appointed an attorney.
Staff writer Sydney Barragan contributed to this report.