Dwayne Crawford, 37, of Concord, New Hampshire has been charged with five felonies: attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault, reckless conduct, arson and criminal mischief because “he doused his twin sister in gasoline before lighting her on fire.”
Fire officials responded to the siblings’ home around 2:45 a.m. and saw smoke coming from a second-floor window.
Tamika was found by emergency personnel in a snow bank outside their home on 66 Woodbine Avenue with most of her upper body severely burned. She suffered third-degree burns to her upper body and was transported to Concord Hospital and then transferred to a hospital in Boston for treatment, police said, where she was in critical condition.
Dwayne told police he deliberately lit his twin sister, Tamika Crawford, on fire, according to court documents.
Tamika told her two sons that Crawford poured accelerant on her before setting the blaze.
Officer Brendan Ryder was first to arrive on the scene and found Tamika’s two young sons and Dwayne standing outside nearby as smoke poured out of the second floor of the home.
According to a sworn affidavit, Dwayne told Ryder, “I did it, I lit her on fire.”
“As Dwayne stated this, he displayed very little affect and expressed no emotion,” Ryder reports.
“My brother did this, my brother did this … you have to arrest him”: Ryder wrote Tamika made this admission as she was being placed in the ambulance.
Dwayne is being held without bail at the Merrimack County jail. He’s scheduled for a hearing on Dec. 28. Motive is unclear.
The 1985 home is listed as owned by the twins’ mother, Rebecca Crawford.
The twins are no stranger to trouble. According to court records, in 2014, Dwayne was charged with simple assault and resisting arrest during a struggle with police. Both of those charges were dismissed.
In 2011, Tamika pleaded guilty to at least three minor offenses, including simple assault and criminal mischief for pushing a woman in the Concord Hospital emergency room, punching a hole in that hospital’s wall and swinging a crutch at a lamp in her mother’s home, breaking it. As a plea deal, she agreed to take a course in anger management.
