HOUSTON – An apartment fire over the weekend that killed a blind, wheelchair-bound woman, may have been an attempt by a gang to kill a rival crew member, Houston investigators told 11 News. A 19-year-old is charged with arson in the blaze that tore through the Timber Run Apartments in northeast Harris County.

The blaze broke out around 10:30 p.m. Sunday night at the Timber Run apartments on Woodforest at River Grove.

Police said Joshua Drumah Mims confessed to setting the fire with a bandana. He allegedly torched a couch in a vacant apartment in an act of gang-related retaliation.

Investigators said lighting a couch on fire is equivalent to igniting five gallons of gasoline because of the speed with which the furniture burns.

The vacant apartment happened to be next door to Lynafaye Skinner, the disabled tenant. Firefighters said she’d called 911 to tell them she was trapped in her apartment on the first floor. She told them she was blind, obese and wheelchair-bound. Firefighters found her under the rubble.

She was the first tenant to report the blaze.

Rescue crews reached the apartments in about seven minutes, but it was apparently too late to save Skinner.

“They told us that she couldn’t get out. Maybe the smoke was so much she couldn’t get out. So when they found her she was in the kitchen,” Tianna Chenier, Skinner’s daughter, said.

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Police believe Mims set the fire to get back at tenants who had already been evicted.

“She didn’t deserve to die like this,” Chenier said. “Somebody has to pay. This is just senseless.”

Five different fire agencies were called in to battle the blaze, which gutted about 40 apartments. It took three hours to get the fire under control.

Residents said they didn’t have much time to grab belongings before the fire got to them.

“My next-door neighbor came banging on my door—by this time, the flames were so high—lord, I’m so nervous—the flames were so high,” Shalynn Henderson said.

The Red Cross planned to go to the apartments to talk with residents and offer assistance.

Skinner’s family said their loss was made even more difficult because they were originally led to believe she had survived.

“I don’t like the fact that my mother was murdered,” Chenier said.

The apparent target apartment of the blaze was vacant because those living there had been evicted on Friday, investigators told 11 News.