Nelitza Gutierrez said her employer called her the night before the fire, telling her to stay home

A housekeeper who managed to escape a deadly Washington, D.C., house fire that claimed the lives of four people is thanking God that she’s still alive.

Nelitza Gutierrez told The Washington Post that she received a voicemail from her employer the night before the fire telling her to stay home because his wife was sick.

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“It was something very suspicious because I felt his voice was really tense,” Gutierrez said in Spanish. “And it was different than what he had said to me before.”

Her employer was Savvas Savopoulos, a 46-year-old executive who was one of the four found dead inside the multimillion-dollar home last Thursday, along with his wife Amy and two others believed to be their 10-year-old son and another housekeeper. Police are still investigating the cause of the fire, which they are calling “very suspicious.”

On Saturday, officials identified a person of interest in the case, releasing surveillance video that shows a hooded individual carrying a large bucket.

Gutierrez said she called Amy on Thursday “to see if she was okay, but she never answered.” For her part, the housekeeper can’t believe her luck. Had she been in the house, she could have died. “I don’t understand why,” she told ABC News. “God saved my life.”