FAIRMONT, W.Va. -- A junior high school dropout with no job and described by a sister as 'a slow learner' faces murder charges in the deaths of seven people killed in an apartment fire he allegedly set.
James Stuckey, 23, one of six children of Joe and Pearl Stuckey, was charged Friday with arson and one murder. He was to be charged with murder in the other six deaths, said Paul Gill, a deputy state fire marshal.
Magistrate court warrants said Stuckey told police he entered the building, lit a matchbook and dropped it on the carpet. He admitted staying and watching the fire. He was spotted by Fairmont police and arrested in front of the still-smouldering building.
The fire was spotted about 3 a.m. Friday by a Fairmont police officer who saw a man and woman leap from upper-story windows.
The suspect lived at home, had no regular employment and dropped out of school in junior high, said a sister who described him as 'a slow learner.' But, the sister said, 'I never thought in my life that James could do something like that.'
She said her brother had never been in trouble before, other than a ticket for driving a car without a license and had never been in jail until now.
'He's not playing with a full deck,' said John Strope, a friend with whom Stuckey went to Washington, D.C., and worked in construction jobs briefly two years ago.
Stuckey got fired 'because he didn't do much work,' said Albert Anderson, another friend.
A woman who said she has known the suspect since his childhood said, 'He drinks, he runs around, I've never known him to do anything like that. It shocked me.'
Strope said he walked into a bar, Kathy's Talk of the Town, at the same time as Stuckey a little after Thursday midnight and stayed until a little after 1 a.m. When he left, Strope said, Stuckey was playing cards. Anderson said Stuckey was still at the bar playing cards about 2 a.m.
Stuckey's sister said when he left the family residence about 9:30 p.m., he said he was going to his aunt's house, then to the bar. The Stuckeys live about a mile away across a river from the apartment building, which also housed a bar -- not the one where Stuckey was playing cards.
Kathy's Talk of the Town is just a walk across a bridge and down a hill to the fire scene.
'Why would he just stand there if he did it,' asked Janet Watkins, who said she is Stuckey's girl friend.
Authorities could make no connection between Stuckey and the apartment building or its residents.
'To the best of our knowledge, all residents of the apartments have been accounted for,' Gill said Friday night after discovery of the seventh body.
Construction equipment, including a crane, was used to sort through the rubble and remove the back wall of the building.
Four people escaped the fire. The man seen by the policeman jumping from the window survived with leg injuries. The woman, Paulita Iligan, 36, did not survive. Authorities did not know immediately whether she died in the fire or in the fall.
Other victims found in the rubble were identified as Robert Jones, 36; Kenneth Godfrey, about 40; William Hayes, 50; Jack Pheasant, 53; Nancy Moore, 43; and Katherine Hayes, 68.
The man and woman named Hayes were not believed to be related.
