The four Mississippi University for Women students who died Saturday in a Birmingham, Ala.-area motel fire were best friends who enjoyed going on shopping trips to Birmingham, one of the victims” mothers said today.
The friends were on one such shopping trip when they became the lone victims of the Saturday night fire at a Days Inn in Hoover, Ala., outside Birmingham. The cause of the fire is still unknown.
“I guess it was just their love for people,” that caused them to bond so quickly, said Jacquelynn McGee of Corinth, whose daughter Jaslynn McGee died with her friends, Jamelia Brown of Grenada, and Catherine Ann Muse and Alondan Turner of Cordova, Ala.
“They just made connections when they first met,” McGee said of the friends. “One of the girls would come home (with Jaslynn) for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year”s. Everywhere you saw one, you saw at least two. They all had wonderful grades. They were very smart girls. They were jokesters.”
McGee estimated they”d taken around 10 shopping trips to Birmingham before the one last weekend.
“To think of something like this happening … You never would have thought their innocence would be taken away so suddenly,” she said.
Mississippi University for Women will hold a candlelight vigil Wednesday to mourn the four freshmen, at 7 p.m. in the Pope Banquet Room on campus.
All four students lived in MUW”s Kincannon Hall. Brown and McGee were pre-nursing students. Jacquelynn McGee said her daughter was planning to go on to be a pediatrician.
Muse was majoring in theater, and Turner, her cousin, was an accounting major, the university said.
Brown was a pledge of the Troubadour social club and was a W-Rep, the university said. Muse was a pledge of the Highlander social club, while Turner worked in the MUW Child Parent Development Center, the school”s on-campus daycare center.
Rusty Lowe, investigator with the Hoover, Ala., Fire Department, said investigators are still working to determine the cause of the fire, which caused heavy damage to 25-30 hotel rooms.
“We had a good half-day (Monday) of investigation with the National Response Team from the ATF,” Lowe said. “We”re following up on leads from witnesses who may have driven past and witnessed the fire.”
Lowe said investigators have only a day”s worth of good weather before rain moves in. “We were able to make headway into the cause and origin of the fire” on Monday, he said, and investigators “started concentrating on a certain area where they think it might be. More investigation is needed before we jump to conclusions.”
The four victims were among several callers to 911 to report the fire, but firefighters could not reach them because of the flames.
Jacquelynn McGee said several attorneys have contacted her about legal action against the motel, but “right now we”re mainly focused on getting our daughter buried. Then we”ll pursue something else.”
The Birmingham News reported that only four to five of the damaged rooms were occupied at the time of the fire.
Meanwhile, hundreds of friends and family members of the students joined memorial sites set up on Facebook, sharing memories and leaving messages.
“I adored you miss CATHERINE! I can”t believe you are really gone,” reads one post from a classmate, on a Facebook site dedicated to Catherine Ann Muse. “I enjoyed pledging with you so much, and will always remember that beautiful smile and that charming laugh. I know you are in a better place but I wish you were still here. Rest in peace sweetheart you will be missed.”
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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