AUGLAIZE COUNTY — The investigation into a fatal fire that killed two girls in March has been closed after an Auglaize County grand jury returned a “no bill detailing that no indictable offense occurred.”
Sisters Trinity Lhamon, 10, and Keelin Doty, 7, were found dead inside their home in the 18,000 block of Ohio 196, north of Waynesfield, on March 23 after it caught fire.
A passerby spotted the fire and a neighbor called in the fire to 911.
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According to a State Fire Marshal’s Office report, the girl’s mother Amanda Doty had left the girls home alone while she went to work to fill in for a co-worker. Amanda Doty told investigators the girls were asleep when she left the house about an hour and 15 minutes before the fire was first reported.
The girls’ father, Shawn Doty, also was at the home before the fire and left for work eight minutes before the flames were first reported, according to an interview he had with investigators. Shawn Doty told investigators he had left a door of the house unlocked when he left.
Amanda Doty told investigators “that prior to leaving for work she looked in the kids’ bedroom and observed Keelin in bed with her dog and Trinity lying in bed curled up with her body pillow,” according to the report.
One of the girls was found dead in a bathroom with a lighter laying next to her and the other was found laying next to her bed, the report said.
The mother told investigators the girls were supposed to go to her father’s house, which was located next door, when they woke up in the morning.
The Auglaize County Prosecutor’s Office presented the case to a grand jury last week, however the evidence presented did not warrant any criminal charges, according to the fire report.
The cause of the fire has been listed as undetermined and the fire marshal’s office determined the origin of the fire was in the kitchen.
The Auglaize County Coroner’s Office ruled both girls deaths as accidents and determined that they died as a result of smoke inhalation.
