Bodies Found Days After the Fires: One in a Burned Houston Home, One in Hitchcock
Investigators in Houston and in Hitchcock, 45 miles south, are working two separate scenes where bodies were found days after house fires - one nearly two weeks later, after a neighbor called about a smell, and one when family came back for their belongings.
HOUSTON - Two burned houses on the Texas Gulf Coast are now investigation scenes twice over - once for the fires, and again for the bodies found in them days afterward. In Houston, firefighters responded to a house fire on Terry Street around 5:30 a.m. on October 18 and contained it, though not before it damaged an adjacent home, Firehouse reported from ABC13 Houston's account. Neighbors told the station nobody had lived in the home for several years, but homeless people were known to be in it; the morning of the fire, temperatures had dropped to 49 degrees.
Eleven days later, on October 29, a 911 call about a bad smell coming from the home brought police back - and officers found a body inside. Houston Fire Department arson investigators have been working to determine the cause of the blaze and are working with Houston police on the body that was found. Officials did not say whether the body may have been in the home when the fire broke out, and no identity or cause of death has been reported.
Nearly 45 miles south in Hitchcock, the sequence was shorter and stranger. Firefighters responded to a house fire on North Railroad Avenue on October 25, contained it, searched the home and cleared the scene. Early on October 28, family members returning to retrieve property discovered an unconscious woman in the fire-damaged home. Police identified her as Brandi Gregg, who lived in the home.
Hitchcock Assistant Police Chief Jeff Evans told the station Gregg did not have any injuries consistent with the fire, nor gunshot or stab wounds - which is why the Galveston County Sheriff's Office has been called in to assist with the investigation. Neither case has a stated cause, and in both, the honest summary is the same: a fire scene that was cleared became a death investigation days later, and the answers now belong to the investigators.
