MERIDIAN — A shotgun-toting methamphetamine addict forced his way into a stranger's Meridian home, then set it ablaze last year, killing himself and two members of the family hiding inside, the Ada County Sheriff's Office says.
Details of the Sept. 27, 2017 home-invasion-turned-horror-story were released Wednesday by the Ada County Sheriff's Office, after an investigation that stretched on more than a year.
Investigators cleared two deputies - Sage Hickam and Chris Matkin - of any wrongdoing for shooting at 35-year-old Pavel Florea as he stood in the doorway of the family's home. Sheriff Steve Bartlett praised the deputies in a Facebook post, writing that the pair "risked their lives in a chaotic and dangerous situation to do what they could to help the people in the home and protect the public."
It started with a phone call.
Scott McAlister, his wife Lily, and his elderly mother Carmen Abbott were inside their house at West Amity and Linder roads when the pounding began at about 10:30 p.m.
Frightened, one of the women in the home dialed 911, telling dispatchers a man she didn't know was trying to get into their house. As she was still on the phone, that man - later identified as Florea - made it inside.
The first two sheriff's deputies, Hickam and Matkin, got to the house moments later in time to see Florea step back out of the house holding a shotgun. The deputies called out to Florea to drop the gun; instead, the sheriff says, he pointed it towards them.
Both deputies opened fire, shooting a total of six rounds. Florea disappeared back into the house, and the deputies heard him say he had been shot. Hickam and Matkin called out to the gunman, but he refused to come back outside.
By 10:45 p.m. - 15 minutes after the first 911 call - the house was on fire.
There were no hydrants nearby, fire officials say, and the 107-year-old wood home was going up fast. Neighbors stepped outside to see the orange glow lighting up the sky as the building became engulfed.
Hickam, Matkin and other deputies who had by then arrived at the scene broke out the windows of the burning home and tried to direct the people inside to safety. Scott and Lily McAlister made it out; 84-year-old Carmen Abbott and Florea did not.
Scott, badly burned, was airlifted to a burn center in Salt Lake City, where he was pronounced dead.
3 dead after home invasion, house fire in Meridian
The Ada County Coroner's Office later determined that both Abbott and Florea had died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Her death was ruled a homicide; Florea's was ruled a suicide.
The coroner found what appeared to be a gunshot wound to Florea's foot, indicating that the deputies had hit him with at least one bullet. The shotgun he had been holding - stolen from an acquaintance before the break-in - was recovered from among the ash and debris, but investigators weren't able to tell if it had been fired it.
Investigators say gasoline or some other type of accelerant had been used to start the fire, and that all evidence pointed to Florea lighting it.
The 35-year-old's reasoning - for targeting the home of people he had never met and for setting the fire - died with him.
Despite more than a year of work, investigators were not able to establish a motive for the crime with 100 percent certainty. No link between Florea and the victims was ever discovered.
"Our family has learned to live with unanswered questions," Scott's niece Patrice McAlister said.
Lily, the only survivor, left Idaho after the fire and is now living with relatives on the East Coast.
"She's trying to rebuild her life from nothing," Patrice said. "She lost everything that night."
Scott McAlister was terminally ill with liver cancer, and was expected to live only a few more weeks, his niece said. Patrice had been planning a last visit to Meridian to say goodbye that weekend, she said.
She never got the chance.
"I was robbed of my last opportunity to see my uncle and to see my grandma," she said. "It's a really heartbreaking situation."
Detectives have two theories that might explain why Florea turned up at the McAlisters' door that night. The Critical Incident Task Force theorized that Florea either saw a Facebook post about a moving sale at the house, and plotted to break in and steal items, or that he mistook the Amity Road home for another house nearby that had a history of drug activity.
Florea was a heavy methamphetamine user, and had gotten into disputes with several different people in the days and weeks before the fire, investigators say. An autopsy revealed that he had an extremely high level of meth - 11,000 nanograms per milliliter - in his system when he died.
Hickam, Matkin and the other first responders were not hurt in the confrontation, but Bartlett wrote that the crime took a toll, both on the sheriff's employees and the community.
"I know that even though they did the best they could in such a dangerous and horrible situation, our people are still saddened by the fact they couldn’t save everyone who lived at the home. That is a tough thing for all of us here to deal with," he said. "We also know it’s scary when random and violent crimes happen in our community, because they are so rare. One of the reasons this investigation took a significant... time to complete was because everyone who works on Ada County’s Critical Incident Task Force was so dedicated to finding answers."
Patrice said she was grateful for the law enforcement and firefighters who that night, and added she hoped Scott McAlister and Carmen Abbott will be remembered as more than simply victims of a terrifying crime.
"My uncle and my grandmother were just amazing, wonderful people, and it's heartbreaking that the world was robbed of any more time with them," she said.