Back in 2022, Greensboro Police Department responded to a house fire to find three children dead inside. Surveillance footage determined that there was only one suspect in their death: their own mother.
On Dec. 12, 2022, Greensboro police and fire personnel responded to a home on Grimsley Street that was reported to be engulfed in flames. Inside, authorities say they found a 4-year-old and 1-year-old twins dead after being trapped inside. The three died of carbon monoxide poisoning, police said.
As they began looking for answers to how the fire started, neighbors told police the children were home alone when the flames got started. Their only guardian was their mother ...
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Multiple neighbors who were up on the morning of Dec. 12, 2022, told police they had not seen [Brandi] Sturdivant’s car in the driveway at the Grimsley Street home before 6:30 a.m. when a neighbor leaving for work said they did not see the mother’s car at the home.
Ring camera video obtained from one of the neighbors shows the home with no car in the driveway around 7:45 a.m. Just a few minutes later, around 7:48 a.m. a neighbor returning home from work saw smoke and fire at the home. At 7:52 a.m. another neighbor got a knock at the door as Sturdivant looked for help. Ring camera video shows her car in the driveway.
Investigators say that Ring camera footage showed Sturdivant driving her car into the cement barriers at the dead-end of Grimsley Street and making a three-point turn just after 8 a.m., where police made contact with her a moment later. She was taken to the hospital.
Upon police interviews with neighbors and Sturdivant’s family, it was revealed that she had multiple complaints filed against her with Child Protective Services. Some reported bad living conditions which was confirmed later when Sturdivant told investigators all five of her children slept with her in the master bedroom. She then told them she didn’t run the baseboard heat in the winter but instead used a stove in the living room to heat up the house which she believed may have sparked the fire.
Others reported abandonment and lack of supervision particularly, two months prior to the incident when she allegedly left them at home so she could go out, according to the report. Around that time, she was charged with child neglect after one of her twins was found covered in feces.
She also told investigators she kept cocaine in the home, which came up on the autopsy report for one of the deceased children.
Sturdivant is facing three counts of second-degree murder in adition to felony parole violations and three counts of child abuse.