GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Two hours after her elderly father caught fire in the home they shared, Kendra Krueger gently kissed her dad’s head as he lay critically burned in a Grand Rapids hospital.

“It’s OK, Dad. It’s OK,” said Kendra. “Everything’s going to be OK.”

The exchange, and Kendra’s interview the morning of the fire, was captured by a Kent County detective’s body-worn camera.

Ronald Krueger, 89, was bandaged and heavily sedated after suffering what doctors described as “very, very deep” burns over a third of his body.

He would die days later, and his daughter would ultimately be charged with second-degree vulnerable adult abuse, a felony.

The Grand Rapids Township woman, 57, was a live-in caregiver for her dad, who developed dementia after hip surgery and was known to wander the house at night.

Target 8 submitted a public records request and obtained the 911 call, crime scene photos and body camera video of Kendra Krueger’s interview with a Kent County sheriff’s detective.

She placed a call to 911 around 4:30 the morning of Nov. 16, though the chain of events that led to it began hours earlier.

An unrelated car crash in snowy conditions had knocked out power to the Krueger’s neighborhood on Four Mile Road west of Dean Lake.

“Our power went out. We had candles burning. I fell asleep. My dad caught on fire,” a panicked Kendra told a 911 dispatcher.

“He has dementia. I fell asleep while the candles were burning,” relayed Kendra, who later admitted to a detective that she’d used methamphetamine earlier in the evening. She reportedly told the investigator the power outage happened much later, after her drug use.

Sheriff’s deputies noted that vice detectives had visited the house before on a drug investigation. 

“I wanted him to go to bed,” Kendra told the detective, referring to her dad the night of the fire. “I was like, ‘Why don’t we just skip this since we have no lights? Why don’t we just go to bed?’ But he was defiant on that, so I was like, ‘Okay.’ I didn’t mean to, like, go to bed and leave candles burning.”

Kendra said she brought her dad some cake and set him down in his wheelchair in the living room.

“Then I went, and I laid down and I fell asleep. I mean I didn’t, I wasn’t planning on falling asleep. I mean, I was like thinking, ‘Maybe I can get some stuff done.'”

When she awakened later, she heard her dad.

“So, you hear him like kind of yelling or moaning?” asked the detective. 

“Yeah, not even very loud. Not even very loud. And I came around the corner, and I looked, and he was on the kitchen floor … engulfed in flames.”

Kendra, who was at times tearful and barely audible, said she’d immediately tried to snuff the fire out.

“I jumped on him, and I threw water on him,” she reportedly told the investigator.

But officials say she couldn’t explain exactly how her dad caught fire and said she thought she had blown all the candles out.

Photos of the aftermath show soot scattered about the kitchen floor where she’d found her dad on fire.

“The kitchen, there’s dirty dishes everywhere,” said Kendra, who told deputies she feared she’d be accused of providing inadequate care due to the poor conditions in her home.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she said at one point on the body camera video. “This is horrible … It’s the most horrible thing you’d even think of.”

According to the report from the Kent County Sheriff’s Office, detectives initially referred the case to the prosecutor’s office for a charge of vulnerable adult abuse fourth degree, which is a misdemeanor that carries up to a year in jail.

But Kent County prosecutor Chris Becker increased the count to second degree vulnerable adult abuse, a felony punished by up to fifteen years if convicted.

Under Michigan law, a caregiver is guilty of second degree, the felony charge, if their “reckless act or reckless failure to act … causes serious physical harm or serious mental harm to a vulnerable adult.”

Vulnerable adult abuse fourth degree, the misdemeanor, occurs when a caregiver’s “reckless act or reckless failure to act … causes physical harm” or the caregiver “knowingly or intentionally commits an act that under the circumstances poses an unreasonable risk of harm or injury to a vulnerable adult regardless of whether physical harm results.”

Becker declined to comment on his charging decision because the case is still in court.

Kendra is out on bond and expected in court July 20.

Her defense attorney, who said he’s seen no evidence a crime was committed, told Target 8 his client is a “kind person with a good heart” who’s suffered a devastating personal tragedy.  

“I have great respect for Chris Becker and his office, and understand that judgment calls have to be made,” wrote Heath Lynch of SBBL Law in a text to Target 8. “While we are prepared to fight in court for what we believe is the just result here and believe a jury of Kendra’s peers would agree with us, I remain optimistic that a compromise can be reached… Kendra has taken the loss of her father’s presence and companionship harder than anyone.”