Roy Moore accuser Tina Johnson’s house in Gadsden, Alabama burned on Tuesday in what Johnson and her neighbors suspect was an act of arson. Johnson and her husband were at work at the time of the fire. AL.com reports that by the time firefighters extinguished the blaze, everything inside the house was lost.
“I am devastated, just devastated,” Johnson said on Friday. “We have just the clothes on our backs.”
AL.com reports that Johnson’s neighbors noticed a suspicious man walking around the house on Tuesday before it caught on fire. The man allegedly asked one neighbor whether she expected Johnson’s house to burn:
According to Johnson and neighbor Kevin Tallant, other neighbors witnessed a young man who had a history of public intoxication walking around the house before and during the blaze.
“He’s been trouble in the neighborhood for a while,” said Tallant, who lives across the street from Johnson and her family.
… [Johnson] said a woman neighbor told her that the young man in question approached her as she was getting in her car that morning and asked if she thought Johnson’s house was going to burn. The neighbor didn’t know what he was talking about, she said, because flames weren’t visible at the time.
A spokesman for the Etowah County Sheriff’s Department said the fire is under investigation by the Arson Task Force, but no charges have been filed. Investigators have interviewed one suspect but declined to name the individual. The department said in a statement that it does not suspect the fire is related to allegations made against Moore, though it gave no explanation why they believe that to be the case.
Johnson is one of nine women to accuse Moore, a former judge, of past sexual misconduct in the weeks leading up to his December loss to Doug Jones in the Alabama Senate race. Moore grabbed her buttocks during a child custody petition meeting in his Gadsden office in 1991, Johnson claimed. She was 28 at the time.
Johnson and her family are currently living in a motel.
