Danielle Waring, a 19-year-old mother to a 2-year-old son.
David Allen Waring, her 45-year-old father, and Edward “Cameron” Brown, her 21-year-old boyfriend.
Kimberly Lewis, a 45-year-old mother of two.
Kelley Tomkinson, a 47-year-old friend.
All five were identified Tuesday as those killed when a Sunday morning fire ripped through a home on Duluth's Post Oak Drive. And while the exact cause of the blaze remained murky, the lives of those it claimed did not.
Friends, social media accounts and online fundraisers spoke on their behalf.
“They are a wonderful family,” one friend, Blair Woods, said about the Warings, “and the remaining family is staying strong as much as they can be.”
According to her Facebook page and a GoFundMe.com fundraiser, Danielle Waring was just three days shy of her 20th birthday when she died. A graduate of Loganville's Walnut Grove High School, she had a 2-year-old son who lived with his great-grandparents.
“Because of the loss he will never get to know his mother or his grandfather,” an online fundraiser for the toddler said. “Help this family make sure that [he] will have anything that he needs or wants so that he can receive the education he needs to brighten his future.”
David Waring was a graduate of Stone Mountain’s Redan High School and worked in the concrete business, according to his Facebook page.
Cameron Brown’s page suggests that he, like his girlfriend, graduated from Walnut Grove High.
“God, he was so funny and he always made sure to tell me he loved me everyday!” a friend posted Tuesday.
According to a GoFundMe.com page, Lewis had two young daughters. By Tuesday afternoon, the page had raised more than $4,600 for the girls.
Tomkinson “was an amazing woman and had one of the trust most kind souls I’ve ever known,” a friend wrote on Facebook.
Tomkinson and Lewis’ connection to the others was unclear Tuesday. It was also unclear if all five fire victims — who died of smoke and soot inhalation — lived at the home, which was being rented.
The fire broke out around 3:30 a.m. Sunday, rousing several neighbors. The home was already engulfed when firefighters arrived. They were able to locate three of the victims, already deceased, before being forced back out.
The exact cause of the fire remains under investigation, but officials have theorized that it may have started in a fire pit.
“Fire investigators are continuing to interview individuals connected to the case and gather information,” Gwinnett fire Capt. Tommy Rutledge said Tuesday. “They are still not able to rule out the fire pit on the back deck as a potential cause.
Investigators have not been able to determine if there were working smoke alarms in the home, Rutledge said.
Neighbor Tony Segars was woken by the fire.
“It looked like a bonfire had gotten out of control,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday. “As I came downstairs, it was fully engulfed.
“It’s a tragedy for the whole family,” Segars said. “I don’t know what else to say.”
Sunday's fire was at least the third in metro Atlanta to claim multiple lives this year, and the second in Gwinnett County. Two women and four men were killed in a March fire at a home in northwest Atlanta, and a February fire near Tucker killed a woman and her two daughters.
The Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office is investigating the latter.
Earlier this month, a mobile home fire in northwest Georgia's Chattooga County killed six people, including four children.
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