SADIEVILLE, Ky. (LEX18) — A Sadieville woman and her brother are grieving aftertheir uncle and three othersdied in a Florida fire that officials say was set on purpose.
The fire happened early Wednesday morning in Plant City, Fla., about 30 miles from Tampa.
Alyssa Dickey and her brother Jase Conley said that the fire killed their uncle, Chase Bowman, his wife, Jessica Foster Bowman, and Jessica’s mother, Judy Foster. Dickey and Conley didn’t personally know Joe Clites, the fourth person killed in the fire.
Dickey and Conley grew up in Sadieville with Bowman, who they say spent a third of his life in a hospital with cancer. But he beat the cancer and overcame other challenges.
“Not even bad people deserve that you know,” Dickey said. “To have somebody else take your life. It’s not right.”
“And the means of which it happened just make it a little worse,” Conley said. “Because they said someone called and they were stuck inside the house so they were all conscious when it happened.”
Florida authorities accuse 25-year-old Shawn Gossett, who also lived in the home, of setting the fire using paper towels and a lighter. The motive is still unknown.
Dickey and Conley said they don’t know Gossett.
“Not every day that someone you know gets intentionally murdered, that's what bothers me the most,” Dickey said. “He didn't deserve that, none of them in the house deserved that and we should still have them today.”
The family has a GoFundMe in hopes of raising money to help them cover the expenses of arrangements for all four who were killed.
“Our biggest goal is to try to get money to help us bury the family and give them the proper ceremony they deserve for getting their lives taken instead of, you know, getting to live as long as they possibly could,” Dickey said.
