Questions emerge about events leading up to deadly house fire in Southeast DC

Four calls in four days to the same house on 23rd Street Southeast: a domestic fight, broken windows and small fires suspected of being deliberately set.

One call came just two hours before the raging blaze that trapped and ultimately overcame the home’s three occupants as they slept early Sunday morning.

At a press conference, questions emerged about how the fatal fire could have happened, given that police were already looking for the suspect in the earlier incidents, 56-year-old Robert Simpson.

Court documents in the case indicate 34-year-old victim Jessica Cunningham told officers called to the home Oct. 2 that she and Simpson were fighting over relationship issues.

At one point they had both lived in the home, along with 64-year-old victim Ronald McKinnon and his mother, 84-year-old Marion McKinnon, who also died from the fire.

Documents indicate the repeated targeting of the red brick home in the days and hours before the fatal fire left the occupants terrified of Simpson.

Cunningham managed to make a 911 call as she was trapped Sunday morning, screaming for help, saying, “He came back, the house is on fire!”

Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith was asked why officers did not maintain a presence at the house to ensure the victim’s safety.

“It’s my understanding that based on what we know at this point that the officers remained in that area for well over an hour,” she said.

Adding to the layers of tragedy, News4 has learned Cunningham lost her two little daughters, ages 1-year-old and 6-months-old, in a house fire in Tennessee back in 2016. The fire was later determined to have been deliberately set by the children’s grandmother.