By Amy Leigh Womack
The Macon Telegraph
MACON, Ga. — A young boy called 911 early on the morning of Feb. 24, 2013, to report a woods fire.
From his vantage point on Log Cabin Drive, the fire appeared to be behind a house around the corner where Colethia Williams lived with her four children.
“It was flaming up high,” the boy told a dispatcher excitedly before saying he thought the fire had been extinguished. “I don’t see no more flames.”
About a minute later, the boy called back.
“It’s on fire,” he said. An adult’s voice was audible in the background.
Firefighters rushed to the James Street home about 1:30 a.m., four minutes after the boy’s first call.
Macon-Bibb County 911 recordings show that they doused enough of the blaze to begin a search inside the small white house 15 minutes later.
Within a minute, a firefighter keyed up his radio. He took a breath from his air tank.
“We’ve got a victim,” he said.
Seconds later, he radioed that they had found a second child.
In time, firefighters found 10-year-old Nykhiya, 9-year-old Jamarrian and 7-year-old Daija huddled near a window in their mother’s bedroom, shielding 3-year-old J’Lon.
Despite attempts to revive the children, only J’Lon survived.
Their mom, 30-year-old Williams, wasn’t home.
Colethia Williams, right, is comforted after funeral services in 2013 for her three young children Nykhiya, Jamarrian, and Daija Williams. The Williams children, all Riley Elementary School students, died in fire at their James Street home. A fourth sibling, J’Lon, 3, is recovering at the Still Burn Center in Augusta. Colethia Williams was sentenced to six years in prison and 40 years of probation in connection to the deaths.
Although she initially told police she’d gone to a store nearby to buy cold medicine, Williams later admitted that she was at her boyfriend’s house about two blocks away.
Williams pleaded guilty to three counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of cruelty to children this week in Bibb County Superior Court.
After the plea, The Telegraph obtained records of the investigation through an Open Records Act request.
They provide additional details of what happened that morning, and they document prior investigations conducted by the state’s Division of Family and Children Services.
A judge gave Williams until March 21 to turn herself in to begin serving a six-year prison sentence, followed by 40 years on probation.
“She’s suffering every day,” said Reza Sedghi, Williams’ lawyer.
He said the odds of a fire starting while she was away that night were “pretty slim.”
Williams lost three of her four children and now, as part of her sentence, she won’t ever be allowed to have custody of her surviving child, he said.
“It just happened, and she’s paying for it,” Sedghi said.
‘I’ll just stop by right quick’
Hours before the fire, the boy who called 911 had gone to Popeyes with the Williams family and played at their home, according to Macon police records.
The house had a working smoke detector in the hallway, Williams told police in her statement.
“It just went off like last week while I was cooking something,” she told an investigator. “It was beeping.”
In her second interview with police four days after the fire, Williams said Jamarrian had burned a mattress, probably using a cigarette lighter, when they previously lived in an apartment.
Although she said she smoked cigarettes, Williams told the investigator she wasn’t sure if there was a lighter in the house at the time of the fire.
Firefighters found two plastic, orange lighters on a small table in the living room after the fire.
Investigators excluded electrical and mechanical failures as possible causes of the fire. They couldn’t exclude the possibility that one of the children had started it.
Williams told police she left home at 1:15 a.m. and rushed back when she got a call about the fire on her cell phone at 1:44 a.m. Asked at one point “Have you ever left your kids alone like this before?” she replied that she hadn’t.
“If I leave them, I’ll leave them with the next-door neighbor” and her daughter, Williams said. “Other than that, I never leave them home. They always with me.”
Neighbors told police, however, that Williams had a history of leaving her children at home for both long and short periods of time, District Attorney David Cooke said during Williams’ sentencing hearing.
In her second police interview, Williams said her boyfriend asked her to pick him up on the morning of the fire.
“I said ‘naw, the kids already in bed, so I’ll just stop by right quick and see you,’ ” she said.
Previous investigations
DFCS had investigated Williams four times before the fire, according to an agency report filed after the blaze. One of the complaints was found to be “unsubstantiated.”
According to the DFCS report:
A case was opened on May 15, 2006, citing allegations of domestic violence between Williams and Julius Fuller, Jamarrian and Daija’s father. It was alleged that Fuller had struck Williams while children were present, leaving a bruise on her cheek.
Williams was referred to the Crisis Line and Safe House of Central Georgia. An arrest warrant was obtained for Fuller. A safety plan was developed barring Fuller from Williams’ home.
About two years later, Williams self-reported to the Oasis Substance Abuse Center, saying that she used cocaine and marijuana. A petition was filed for court-ordered substance abuse treatment.
Williams was “unsuccessfully discharged” from outpatient substance abuse treatment about three months later for bringing in alcohol.
Her children were placed with an aunt as she continued outpatient drug treatment at another facility. The children were returned to Williams in February 2009 after she passed drug screens for six months and was successful in treatment.
Colethia Williams wipes her tears from her eyes as district Attorney David Cooke presents the facts of the case to Bibb County Superior Court Judge Howard Simms. Williams pleaded guilty to three counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of cruelty to children on March 10, 2014. Williams was indicted on three counts of murder and cruelty to children in the second degree.
In 2011, DFCS launched another investigation after receiving reports of domestic violence between Williams and a male roommate.
The roommate allegedly struck Williams in the face and choked her after an argument, causing Williams to scream and one of the children to call police.
Williams told authorities her roommate had been drinking, and despite her demand for him to leave, he got in bed with her. She rolled over, hitting her lip on his elbow. Her tooth hit her lip, making it bleed.
She said she again told the roommate to leave and called police when he refused.
Williams denied she was choked or beaten.
The roommate left when police arrived.
The children told police their mother’s roommate was “good to them” and to their mother.
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(c)2014 The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Ga.)
Distributed by MCT Information Services