The Ann Arbor fire and police departments are currently investigating a series of suspicious fires that occurred at residences near campus on Saturday.

In response to the fires, which included a blaze in a rental house on State Street and a fire under The Abbey apartment building on Church Street, the Department of Public Safety sent out a crime alert to the University community Saturday evening, alerting community members of the fires and warning them to take precautions.

“The fires all began outside apartment houses at different times (Saturday),” the crime alert states. “One fire resulted in one death and other significant injuries.”

Though officials are still investigating the cause of one of the fires — an early morning blaze that gutted a rental house on 928 S. State St. killing one and injuring two others — officials suspect the fire may have begun after an upholstered couch caught fire on the house’s porch.

According to a press release distributed by the Ann Arbor Police Department on Saturday, the State Street fire was reported to have started on the porch at about 5:15 a.m. before it spread to the rest of the house.

Three residents were sent to the University Hospital. One of the residents, former Eastern Michigan University student Renden LeMasters, died on Saturday. LeMasters was 22 years old.

Of the two other hospitalized residents, Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Brown said one is a University student who was treated and released Saturday, and the other is a woman unaffiliated with the University. The woman remains in critical condition, Brown said.

In an interview with The Michigan Daily Saturday night, Brown refused to comment on the specific cause of the fire, but said that “upholstered couches on porches present an incredible life safety risk for apartment residents.”

Ann Arbor Fire Marshall Kathleen Chamberlain said in an interview with the Daily Saturday afternoon that the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

“There’s damage to the whole house,” Chamberlain said.

According to the release, a witness driving down State Street at about 5:15 a.m. noticed a fire on the porch of the house.

The press release stated that the witness pulled over to notify the occupants of the house, but the fire quickly spread to the interior of the building.

According to the release, five people were inside the house at the time the fire began, three of whom were taken to the University Hospital.

Of the four residents who were not transported to the hospital, at least three are University students.

Bryan Vessels, a University senior who lives on the house's main floor, said in an interview with the Daily that he was able to escape the house without injury.

“I was in my room in the back of the house,” Vessels said. “I got out the back door.”

Al Girard, a University senior who lives across the street from the house, said he woke up at about 5 a.m. and witnessed the blaze as firefighters came.

“The whole front of the house was on fire,” Girard said.

Girard said that about a minute after the fire trucks arrived, he saw a woman on fire run out of the house. According to Girard, the woman ran across the street before a firefighter intervened and sprayed her with a fire extinguisher.

According to an annarbor.com article, one person jumped from a second story window, while two others were rescued from the roof.

Captain Jim Budd, an Ann Arbor firefighter, said in an interview with the Daily that he arrived on the scene at about 6 a.m.

By that time, Budd said the three injured residents had been transferred to the hospital, but the house “was still smoking.”