Mother of 2 children who died in California house fire pleads guilty to 12 felonies

Sep 14, 2023

A Lake Elsinore-area woman who investigators say was sitting in a car while high on methamphetamine as a fire broke out in her home that killed two of her children and her grandmother pleaded guilty to 12 felony charges on Thursday, Aug. 3.

Devinn Elysee Fisher, 31, was sentenced to 12 years in state prison after she was convicted of three counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of willful child cruelty, one count of cruelty to an elder, one count of burning an inhabited structure, four counts of causing a fire that caused great bodily injury and three counts of cruelty to an animal.

The plea was made to the court over the objection of the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, said Brooke Beare, a DA’s spokeswoman. She did not elaborate on the DA’s objection. Fisher’s attorney, Darryl Exum, could not be reached for comment.

Fisher rescued her 1-year-old son from the flames, but 1-year-old Arya Alcaraz and 2-year-old Julian Alcaraz-Fisher were found dead in the garage where they had been living. Phyllis “Baba” Fisher, 85, was pulled from the house, where she had sat in a wheelchair. She died two days later. Three dogs died in the fire.

The fire happened on Jan. 25, 2021, at a home in the 32800 block of Blackwell Boulevard in unincorporated Lakeland Village.

A sworn statement written by a sheriff’s investigator to obtain an arrest warrant said Fisher and her boyfriend entered a silver SUV that afternoon. The boyfriend told investigators that he was smoking meth in the SUV; tests would later determine that Fisher had meth in her system. Fisher told investigators that she had been on the phone calling about her stimulus check.

As they sat there, Fisher’s 1-year-old twins and 2-year-old son watched television in the garage, being kept warm by a space heater held on top of a TV tray via bungee cords, the statement said. The heater somehow came in contact with sheets hanging from the ceiling or clothes on the floor.

About 14 minutes after entering the car, the boyfriend looked in on the children and returned to the SUV. Eight minutes later, the 2-year-old wandered out of the garage before going back inside. The couple did not appear to notice the toddler, the investigator wrote, citing images from a surveillance video.

About seven minutes later, smoke was seen coming from the garage, and Fisher and her boyfriend raced inside.

Firefighters discovered the bodies of the two missing children after extinguishing the flames.

County Child Protective Services had opened cases on the two children who died. By law, those files become public after the death of the children. The Southern California News Group filed a California Public Records Act request for those files, but the county is withholding them because an attorney for the surviving child has filed an objection to their release.

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