Yellow police tape surrounded a Plymouth apartment complex where not one, but two fires broke out around 3:45 Wednesday morning.
"Wait, this is Plymouth, this isn't supposed to happen here," said Kristina Hursh, a resident of the apartment complex.
Hursh is the shocked owner of an Audi, which has seen better days.
"I was about to go to bed and I heard my car alarm going off," Hursh recalled. "And I was kind of confused why. So I was like 'Okay,' it went off and then it went back on again and then I came outside and my car was in flames."
A neighbor used a fire extinguisher to help douse the flames. That's when they noticed the fire in the apartment.
"The front window was on fire in the apartment, and we put that actually out with a hose in the front," said Keith Redding, another resident of the complex. "And then we noticed that the back was on fire and then we put that out as well."
By the time firefighters arrived, there wasn't much left for them to extinguish.
"When we arrived, there was very little fire visible," said Plymouth Deputy Fire Chief Kip Springer. "It was more just to go in and make sure that everything was extinguished."
But, the investigation into how this happened is just beginning.
"Well, usually one leads to the other you know," said Plymouth Police Chief Mike Goldstein. "A car fire might ignite something else if it's in close proximity to a building or vice versa, but that was not the case here."
Officials with the Plymouth police and fire departments would only call the fires "suspicious."
Yet talk to Hursh, and there's no question this was the work of an arsonist.
"They used two bottles filled with something and threw it at my car," she said. "So kind of like a molotov cocktail type deal."
As for the apartment where the fire started, Plymouth fire officials say things could have turned out much worse.
"Of the four units, all tenants made it out safely," Deputy Fire Chief Kip Springer said. "And fortunately for the unit of origin, the smoke detector was working, and I can absolutely tell you that saved his life."
Plymouth police say the investigation could take a couple weeks, but if they determine the fire was intentionally set, they're hopeful they'll be able to find who was responsible.
Delane Cleveland
dcleveland@twelve.tv
Oct. 24, 2012