A 41-year-old woman who lost her home in a divorce has left many people shocked after she started a fire that burnt down 20 homes.
Adrienne Satterly
A woman living alone in a home awarded to her husband in a divorce started a fire in the living room that quickly spread to 19 other houses, causing more than $1 million in damage, according to reports on Tuesday.
The woman, whom officials identified as Adrienne Satterly, 41, started a blaze in a stack of mattresses early Sunday in her home in Hiram, then drove off with her two cats, WSB-TV reported.
Her home and three others in the subdivision were destroyed and 16 others suffered damage, fire officials said.
“Despite the massive property damage, only one minor injury was reported,” the Paulding Fire Department said.
Satterly has been charged with 14 counts of first-degree arson and three counts of aggravated animal cruelty, Fox 5 Atlanta reported. Two dogs and a cat died in the blaze, fire officials said.
Jailhouse records show she was also charged with public intoxication.
Yolanda Woodland owned the dogs that perished when the flames spread to her home. She was asleep when the fire started about 3:25 a.m. She told Fox 5 she and Auzalea Godfrey, her daughter, lost everything.
"The house next door, the whole thing was already engulfed in flames, our living room and kitchen was already on fire," she said. "Within two minutes, the house was engulfed in flames. I mean it went really quick."
Godfrey said they were barely able to get out and knock on neighbor doors ahead of the fast-moving flames.
Georgia Insurance Department spokesman Glenn Allen told the West Georgia Neighbor, a local newspaper, Satterly’s husband was awarded the house in a divorce settlement. She was living in the house by herself, and her husband lived somewhere else.
“She was scheduled to leave the home,” Allen told the paper.