Secretary starts fire at school after principal notices missing money, Texas cops say

A school secretary in Texas is accused of starting a fire in an attempt to avoid questioning about missing money, according to court documents.

The chain of events leading to the fire begins in September, when the principal of C.E. Barrick Elementary School, in the Houston school district, was alerted to some financial irregularities, court documents filed Dec. 15 said.

Vendors contacted the school, saying they hadn’t received due payments. The principal also noticed that cash from multiple school fundraisers had never been deposited.

The secretary, 49-year-old Adriana Castorena-Narvaez, handles much of the school’s finances, so the principal tried to question her about the funds. However, Castorena-Narvaez said she had a family emergency and left, documents say.

She returned weeks later, on Oct. 6, and the principal scheduled another meeting to discuss the funds. However, it didn’t happen because Castorena-Narvaez “claimed a medical emergency and was transported to the emergency room.”

Her pattern of avoidance came to a head when she returned to work again on Oct. 10 and, investigators say, set the conference room on fire.

Castorena-Narvaez was one of the first people in the building that day, and the very first to notice the fire, and alerted others to it on a radio around 6:30 a.m., documents say.

Another school employee rushed into the room and put out the blaze with a fire extinguisher, investigators said.

The employee described the fire as “weird, looked like a campfire piled up.”

Based on interviews and other evidence, investigators believe Castorena-Narvaez started the fire herself “using materials at hand,” in order to continue evading questions about the missing money, court documents say.

Castorena-Narvaez is charged with arson.

This story was originally published December 21, 2022 at 1:36 PM with the headline "Secretary starts fire at school after principal notices missing money, Texas cops say."