OLD TOWN, Maine — Maine Crime Lab scientists and investigators with the state fire marshal’s office continue to examine the evidence involved in the deaths of a mother and her two children killed in a house fire four months ago.
“Old Town is still an ongoing investigation,” Fire Marshal Joseph Thomas said Thursday in an email. “With a variety of fire debris at the lab for analysis and the toxicology tests done with the [medical examiner’s office], the time taken so far is no surprise.”
Fire investigators have yet to release any information about the suspected cause of the Nov. 7 Old Town fire that claimed the lives of Maiysha Somers-Jones, 34, her daughter, Isis Doe, 10, and her son, Zebulon Doe, 8.
Friends of the family question why the investigation is taking so long.
“I think it’s pretty disturbing, but typical,” Bernie Kellish of Bangor, said Wednesday by text message.
To get absolutely “no answers from our ‘law enforcement’ … it really does not make me feel confident in them,” Kellish said. “The public deserves better.”
Attempts to reach family members of Somers-Jones have been unsuccessful.
Somers-Jones and her children all died of smoke inhalation, Mark Belserene, spokesman for the state medical examiner’s office, stated of the cause of death at the end of December. The official manner of death — which categorizes a death as being accidental, natural, homicide or suicide — is still pending.
The medical examiner’s office has the manner of death listed as ‘undetermined’ which is the same as pending because we’re waiting for all investigations to be completed,” Belserene said in a Thursday email. “This allows us to also change it if new information comes to light.”
He added that, in this case, there are a number of agencies investigating the three deaths and the manner cannot be finalized until all of their reports have been filed.
Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said in a Thursday email that there are “no new developments,” in the ongoing investigation by Maine State Police and the fire marshal’s office into the Old Town fire.
Neighbors spotted the blaze just after 10 p.m. Nov. 7 at the white two-story Cape-style house on Bradbury Street, and firefighters found Somers-Jones in a first-floor bedroom and her two children in an upstairs bedroom. Crews unsuccessfully attempted resuscitation of the children, according to a press release from the fire marshal.
The three family members are part of the 21 people in Maine who lost their lives to fire in 2016, representing an increase of two over the 19 fire deaths in 2015, according to annual fire data provided by McCausland. Investigators found no working smoke detectors in the Old Town rental home, according to the fire marshal’s office.
Five of the fatal fire incidents in 2016 involved homes without smoke detectors, or with detectors that were disabled or did not have batteries, according to fire data. In four other cases, the damage was too extensive to determine whether there were working detectors in the homes.
The people who died in fires during 2016 ranged in age from 8 to 93, and all died in residential fires, except for one person killed in a vehicle fire and one killed in a fire outdoors, according to the fire data.
Maine saw 19 fire deaths in 2015, 2013 and 2012, according to McCausland.
There were 25 deaths related to fire in 2014, including four in Caribou because of a child playing with matches and six in Portland from the careless disposal of smoking materials at a Noyes Street apartment building. Landlord Gregory Nisbet, was sentenced in December to 90 days in jail and a fine of $1,000 for a housing code violation in the Portland fire, and is appealing his conviction.