“Flora Fire: A Chase for Answers“ is a four-part series that aired on WISH-TV covering the 2016 deaths of four young girls in an intentionally set fire in Flora, Indiana.

The Chase For Answers | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

FLORA, Ind. (WISH-TV) – More than seven years after an intentionally set fire took the lives of her four young children, Gaylin Rose says she still has more questions than answers.

I-Team 8’s Dakarai Turner traveled to Missouri where Rose has settled now, far away from the painful memories she left behind in Indiana.

On November 21, 2016, a fire tore through their two-story duplex in Flora. Gaylin escaped the fire, but all four of her children, Keyana Davis, 11, Keyara Phillips, 9, Kerriele McDonald, 7 and Kionnie Welch, 5, lost their lives that night.

Rose sat down with I-Team 8, in her home, for an open conversation about that night and the years since. No topic was off limits. Gaylin said one question still burns in her mind, why did she get out and her girls didn’t?

“My life will never be the same. It’s more than ‘angry.’ I’m hurt,” Rose said. “I’m more hurt than anything because my family was wiped away right in front of me for no reason.”

It’s been more than seven years now, but all four girls are still alive in Rose’s memory.

I-Team 8: Do you remember those moments and what was it like?

Rose: “I talked to my grandma before I went to sleep. Out of nowhere, something just told me to get up. [I] Rolled out of the bed and then … when I hit the corner, that was it. It was like I am [expletive] in a house on [expletive] fire.So, I tried to get to the steps to go up to the to get the girls and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t say anything. That’s how bad the smoke was.  All I remember is the ambulance coming in. They put me in the ambulance and I [cried for] my babies. I just wouldn’t stop saying, ‘My babies!’”

Medical records show Rose was transported to the Eskenazi burn center. Her injuries included burns to her body and eyes and smoke in her throat.

Her injuries and other nightmarish reminders in the months following the tragedy led her to leave Indiana. She spent a short time in California before eventually settling in Jefferson City, Missouri, where the girls were born.

It’s a small town on the Missouri River, where the state capitol looms large over Main Street. She shared their story there taking I-Team 8’s Dakarai Turner by the hospital where the girls were born, the schools they attended and other places where Rose said she learned to be a mother and they all learned to be a family.

Jefferson City was their first home, but Rose said she moved the girls to Flora to find something new.

“We decided to make the changes because I wanted to go and be somewhere different,” she said.

But it wasn’t until they moved to Indiana that Rose said they really felt the prejudice.

I-Team 8: “Why did you decide to make the change?”

Rose: “We decided to make the changes because I wanted to go and be somewhere different.”

I-Team 8: “What was life like in Flora with the girls?”

Rose: “It was totally different than Jefferson City. I worked in the Marathon, the gas station. Every day I would have a gentleman come in there and throw change at me because he wanted coffee. The energy shifted…”

Six months after moving into her home, it went up in flames. Officials called it arson as investigators looked for the person who did it.

I-Team 8: “What do you think about how they’ve handled the investigation?”

Rose: “I just feel like they were moving too fast to just jump to their own conclusions without stopping and thinking.”

I-Team 8: “Why do you think they’d want to jump to a conclusion?”

Rose: “I’m black, to be honest with you.”

Rose believes that is why the attention shifted three months later in Delphi, two white girls went missing and were found murdered. That’s when she says the press coverage, law enforcement resources and attention all shifted away from solving their case and went to the hunt in Delphi.

I-Team 8: “Do you think if you were white and this was four white girls who had died in a fire, do you think the investigation would have been conducted differently?”

Rose: “Of course, yes; they would have taken more time [to look] into it. It was so fast within three to six months they had all the answers.”

In the next part of this series, we talk to those closest to Gaylin and show you how the girls are still being remembered in Flora seven years after their deaths. We also have more on the investigation, including details we’ve uncovered that police admit could turn the case upside down.

Part 3 of the series “Flora Fires: A Chase for Answers” will air at 5 p.m. May 8 on WISH-TV.

The Chase For Answers | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3