Tonight, a man may just be learning that a fire destroyed everything he owned. Marlon Usher works every day, and is currently without a cellphone, so when his house caught on fire sometime after 7:00 this morning, his family had no way of telling him.
They also couldn't inform him that his house on Arlington Drive was allegedly set on fire by his neighbor, someone who grew up with him like a brother.
But according to Usher's mother, the alleged arsonists may be mentally ill. She explained that this is not the first confrontation he and her son have had recently. We spoke to her today.
Voice of: Brenda Usher, Mother of Fire Victim
"I dragged down the window, when I dragged down the window, just smoke, and I heard the crowd yelling, Fang burnt down Tiny- I call my son, Marlon Usher, who is the owner of the house back there, I call him Tiny, you know, so they said, Fang burnt Tiny's house, so I said, oh my god, so I jumped up and I came out here, when I came out here, the whole crowd was out here and then one of the neighbors said they told him, you see how you burnt down Tiny's house, and he said, I burnt it down so what could you do now? But then the neighbor had to run to help them at the back to wet the place so that the next houses don't catch fire. So when I came down, that's what I saw."
"From about a month or so, I had to call the police because, it's not only that son, like my kids live at the back, and I heard cursing, and he will kill and he will kill, so I came down and I got the sense of it that he's picking on my kids and I said, I have a lot of son and I don't want those kids to go do that little boy anything, so I called the police."
"When they got him out here, I didn't know he was going funny in his brain, I told him, why are you acting like that? You grew up together, you're like brothers, why are you acting like that, about how you will kill my child? I just have a daughter that died and I can't bear my own self, what will you do? So when he started to talk again, it was then I realize that he was starting to go bad because he was saying a little man under his house that wants to kill him and they're going into his mouth and a lot of things like not normal."
"Now this son live beside him, so it looks like, the land, he said the land is his land that my son is on and that's what it started it, look like, started the problem."
"I'm asking the public if they could please help him to get something to build back his little house, he could build, he's a carpenter, he could build his little house and his zinc and for us to not have any work because I don't want any problem with those young people. I just want my son to get back his little house and start from there to maybe buy his little clothes when he works and get back on his foot."
If anyone would like to assist Usher, they can reach his mother at phone number 606-4295.
