Greensboro mother charged with murder after 3 children die in house fire, police say
GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) – Greensboro police charged Brandi Sturdivant, 29, on Monday with three counts of second-degree murder in connection with the deaths of three of her children on Dec. 12, 2022.
On that date, a home on Grimsley Street in Greensboro caught fire sometime before 8 a.m. and three children, a 4-year-old and a set of 1-year-old twins, were trapped inside, ultimately dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from the fire.
On Jan. 27, 2023, the mother of the three children, Brandi Sturdivant, was charged with three counts of felony child abuse. Police say that the children were home alone when the fire broke out.
Sturdivant, who was already in jail when the murder charges were filed, is scheduled for a court appearance on the new charges on Tuesday.
Dec. 12, 2022
Multiple neighbors who were up on the morning of Dec. 12, 2022, told police they had not seen 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.
Multiple 911 calls were received about the fire starting around 7:54 a.m., and the Greensboro Fire Department arrived on the scene to a fully-involved fire at 7:58 a.m.
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.
Relatives of Sturdivant and the children arrived on the scene and talked with investigators, telling them that Sturdivant had six children, but the oldest did not live with her at the home on Grimsley Street. They also told investigators they had filed multiple complaints with Child Protective Services with the complaints ranging from bad living conditions to abandonment and non-supervision.
Someone told investigators that around two months prior, Sturdivant told them she left all the children at home alone so she “could go out at night.”
Interviewing Sturdivant while on the scene on the same day, documents allege she told them that she and all five of the children slept in the master bedroom.
She said she did not run the baseboard heat in the winter, instead using a stove in the living room to heat the home. She told investigators that she believed the stove may have been the source of the fire.
An autopsy revealed one child had cocaine in their system at the time of death, and Sturdivant allegedly told investigators where she kept her cocaine in the home. Sturdivant was charged with two additional counts of felony parole violation, on top of the three counts of felony child abuse.
Prior complaints
According to the warrant, the Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services had received several complaints about Sturdivant, dating back to 2016.
Complaints in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and two in 2021 were noted as “unknown complaint, case closed.”
In September of 2022, Greensboro Police Department charged Sturdivant with misdemeanor child neglect stemming from a situation where one of the toddler-aged twins was found covered in feces. GCDHHS removed the children from the home for 8 days but returned them and closed the case.
In November 2022, an unknown person complained about the children being unsupervised. This case was still under investigation with GCDHHS at the time of the fire.
In addition to a complaint filed by the police after the fire, there were a total of nine complaints filed to GCDHHS.
Investigation into Guilford County DSS
The deadly house fire prompted a months-long investigation into the Guilford County Department of Social Services, revealing a pattern of policy violations and forcing DSS workers to make changes or risk losing funding. Some of the violations were directly related to the fire.
Six months after the fire, on May 16, 2023, the State Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to county leaders detailing how DSS workers violated policy. The four-page letter explained how in the case of Sturdivant and her children, DSS workers did not thoroughly address safety, maintain ongoing contact with families and follow up on safety concerns reported by the mother.
State leaders also cited DSS with a number of policy violations related to 29 other cases, and told the county to create a corrective action plan.
In a video on the county’s website, DSS Director Sharon Barlow said the state’s letter wasn’t the first time concerns were brought up.
“Well before we received information from the state, we had our own concerns and had already begun to dig deeper into areas where we felt like there were practice challenges,” she said. “We had already begun to ask our county leaders and county commissioners for additional resources.”
A regional child welfare consultant came to Guilford County in 2023 four times between May and June to help the county create and enforce its plan.
Leaders submitted it on June 16, 2023, with four goals in mind: enhancing DSS’s continuous quality improvement processes, building staff capacity, implementing increased oversight and strengthening deeper court partnerships.
Less than one month later, the state approved the corrective action plan and came back to Guilford County in October about 90 days later for a first review.
Since the initial report, the county has been 100% in compliance with training requirements, including the completion of back-to-basics training, which social workers highlighted in the county’s video.
“We really have gone back and started to change our outlook on how we do things and being able to implement new tools in each area of child welfare,” said Isaac Dannenberg, a Guilford County social worker.
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