photo courtesy of Facebook/JermieraFowler
Formerly missing Alabama woman Jermiera Ivory Fowler’s body was found engulfed in flames at the end of a dead-end road, surrounded by woods on Thursday, June 8. Before her disappearance, she allegedly met with someone to complete a Facebook Marketplace deal.
According to the Birmingham Police Department, the 31-year-old woman who had been missing since earlier this week was found after surrounding neighbors called to report a foul smell and a burning pile nearby. Upon their arrival, the first responders pronounced her dead and noticed trauma on her body after putting out the fire. Further inspection of Fowler’s body revealed she was shot before being lit ablaze on Sellers Road in Alabama.
Herbert Brown, a nearby street Tucker Avenue resident, explained to WVTM that he woke up that night to the rising flames. He said, “When I looked out my bedroom window, I seen a big flame. I mean a big flame.”
“So I was curious, like is somebody burning trash, so I go out there with a big flashlight, and I look over the fence, and there was this body on fire. The firefighters came, they put the fire out, and the police stayed out there until 2 or 3 in the morning just scanning the place.”
“I seen this picture, and it went through my mind, that’s that lady out here that’s burning,” Brown expressed, “This shouldn’t have happened to her like that.”
He hauntingly said that whoever set Fowler on fire must have been familiar with the area to have chosen the isolated location to leave her. “That’s a dead end, and you’d have to know this area to want to cut off onto that street and go down through there because it’s a church down that dead end, no traffic be down there,” Brown said.
Although no arrests have been made, police have not yet suggested that the Facebook Marketplace meetup is related to her disappearance. Fowler’s car was discovered at a separate location, and authorities are investigating her death as a homicide.