An Omaha woman will be charged Tuesday with abusing a vulnerable adult. Cherie Harbour was arrested over the weekend after her wheelchair-bound daughter was left home alone and critically burned in a suspicious fire.

Firefighters called to the home at 65th and Maple Street around 7:45 p.m. Saturday were told by a neighbor that a handicapped woman, 23-year-old Tawnisha Harbour, was still inside.

She suffered burns to 30 percent of her body. Tawnisha was taken to Creighton Medical Center in critical condition, then transferred to the Clarkson Burn Unit where she is still being treated. An updated condition has not been released.

Neighbors are shocked by the fire and stunned by the arrest of Tawnisha's mother, 40-year-old Cherie Harbour.

"It would be hard for me to think her mother would do that," said Marvin Godbolt. "Actually, I would say iI have to see it, you know, just to see them come with some physical evidence or fingerprints is on there, the girl says, hey my mother put me in here."

According to the police report, Tawnisha was effectively locked inside the burning room. One door was tied shut with a bed sheet while a second door had a door knob on the outside, but not on the inside. The report goes on to reveal her mother was responsible for this.

"It makes me sick if that happened," said neighbor Michele. "To hear that, that's pretty bad," said Marvin.

Even after hearing what was in the police report, neighbors don’t want to jump to conclusions. They say on several occasions, Tawnisha locked herself out of the house and had to go to them for help. They think it might be a situation where someone thought they were actually helping Tawnisha by keeping her in that room.

"It gives me the chills really because, God I don't know about now if she did that?” said Michele. “You sure she did it?"

Investigators have called the fire suspicious, adding they are continuing to investigate and going through the debris. It appears the fire started in the room where Tawnisha was, but it has yet to be determined how the fire started.

"I was just hoping she was alive, hoping she was okay because she's a nice girl," said Marvin, who watched the fire with his mother Mertis from their front porch.

They've known Tawnisha for years. "The first person I thought about when I see the fire was I thought about her, thinking about her and how she's going to get out of there."

“They put the covers over her all the way because I thought maybe she was burned bad or worse because usually when they cover somebody up they might have passed away," said Marvin.

Raquish Harbour drove up to the house just after the fire started and watched as paramedics finally freed her sister. "It was crazy, what do you want me to say? Because it was our house and our sister and there wasn't anybody here."

“I would never have left a child of mine in a house by herself in a wheelchair in that condition,” said Mertis Godbolt, who has seen a lot from her front porch over the years.

"It's sad to know that she was in there by herself. This isn't the way you treat a young lady, no way at all."