SNOHOMISH – Police are now nearly sure that the fire that killed a Snohomish family was started accidentally.
“We are 90 percent certain this was not an arson fire,” Snohomish Police Chief John Turner said today.
Investigators have narrowed down the location in the mobile home where the fatal Sept. 30 fire started, he said.
A makeshift heater and a power strip were found where fire investigators believe the blaze started, Turner said.
“Power supplies have a history of overheating,” the police chief said.
Additional analysis still is underway to help investigators come to a definitive conclusion on the fire’s cause.
Investigators had considered the fire suspicious: A specially trained dog detected signs of a flammable accelerant at the mobile home. Test results are still pending to determine what the dog might have sniffed.
The victims were Maria "Sandra" Montaño, 28; her daughters Ashley, 7, and Yareli, 4; and her sister, Petra "Claudia" Montaño, 25.
The early morning blaze killed the family as they slept.
Federal immigration officials arrested the man who sold the mobile home to the family for $4,000 in late September, days before the fatal fire. He’s being held in a federal detention center for possessing fraudulent immigration documents and living illegally in the county, according to a complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Police were interested in the man early on during the fire investigation.
