by Elizabeth Dinh, KOMO News (Beacon Hill Blog news partner)

A Seattle woman came home on Sunday to discover someone set fire to her home. Now, the neighborhood is on edge as police search for an arsonist.

While she was at church, police say someone broke into Eddye Davis’s Beacon Hill house by knocking down a door and then started a fire inside.

“You know—it’s one thing to break in and take something. It’s another to set the house on fire and take away what for some people could be a lifetime of memories,” said Thomas Poole, Davis’s son-in-law.

Davis moved into the home nearly 40 years ago. She lived in the home with her husband until he passed away five years ago. It was where her daughter, Maret, grew up.

“This is just evil. It hurts. It hurts more than anything because true enough—things can be replaced, but it just hurts,” she said.

Davis’s house has been broken into before and some neighbors said they’ve also been victims of break-ins.But this is the first time anyone here has seen an arson, and they’re shocked.

“Well, it’s very troubling. You are concerned about what goes through the minds of people that would do something like this,” said Thomas Poole.

Even more troubling, Davis’s family says is why someone would target her home.

“If she wasn’t at church, she was helping somebody,” said her daughter.

Now, a woman who’s known for lending a hand to those in need is out of home. There’s so much smoke damage it’s not safe to stay.

Even though Davis was too shaken to speak, her family says they know she’s strong.

“So we just have to pick up and move on—keep living,” said Thomas Poole.

A witness described the suspicious man fleeing the scene as a light skinned black man between the ages of 17 to 19-years-old. He is approximately 6’1″ tall and 160 pounds, and was dressed in all black at the time of the incident.

See also the Seattle Police Blotter blog entry about this incident.