The victims of the horrific house fire in Brisbane over the weekend have been identified: a mother and an eight-year-old girl.
When the east Brisbane house where Stephanie Ryan, 31, was watching Raven Contini, 8, caught fire.
On Sunday morning, emergency services and firefighters were summoned to the Bayside Court property located in Thorneside. By the time emergency personnel arrived, the house was completely engulfed in flames, according to a Queensland Police spokesperson.
They found the body of eight-year-old Raven after the fire was extinguished. On Monday afternoon, the spokesperson confirmed they had also found the 31-year-old woman’s body.
Friends and family have begun laying flowers at the entrance to the unit. Stephanie was a friend of the Contini family visiting from Alice Springs and was babysitting Raven while her parents were in northern NSW for a night, according to 7NEWS.
“She was a loveable child,” her grandmother Thelma Cowell told 7NEWS. “She only just came up on holidays and she’d only been up three days.”
Jo Pettigrew, Raven’s great aunt, told 7NEWS her niece always had a smile on her face. “Such a bright and bubbly little girl,” she said.
The police spokesperson said investigators were still trying to piece together how the fire started. Detective Inspector Paul Dalton said police had “nothing to say this fire is suspicious in any way, but we will treat it as though it is until we make a determination one way or the other”.
Information about the fire can be reported via Police link’s suspicious activity form or via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
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