Melvin Whistlehunt was at work when he got a call from his mother at 2:30 a.m. Friday that his home was engulfed in flames.

As firefighters began hosing down the house at 1275 Buffalo Shoals Road, it became clear the home was set on fire intentionally. What they found launched an immediate hate crime investigation.

The fire was intense, but it didn’t keep Jason Drum, chief of the Bandys Crossroads Volunteer Fire Department, from noticing graffiti written across the back of the brick home within five minutes of arrival. Someone used white spray paint to write a derogatory message referring to sexual orientation and race.

Drum asked Whistlehunt’s mother, who lives next door, if the graffiti had been there. She told him it was new.

Whistlehunt said everyone who knows him is aware he’s gay, but few people have outwardly criticized him for it.

“I don’t know of anybody who would go this far,” he said.

As soon as Drum found the writing, he called the Catawba County Fire Marshal’s Office. He said he felt that it was important to get them started on their investigation right away. The State Bureau of Investigation arson unit and the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office are also involved in the investigation.

“It is considered a hate crime,” said Karyn Yaussy, Catawba County emergency management coordinator.

SBI Investigator Mark Bivens used an arson dog to search for evidence of accelerants, however Yaussy would not comment on whether any was found. However, she said there were multiple indicators aside from the writing on the wall that the fire was set intentionally.

“I’ve been in the fire service 10 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Drum said.

The Bandys Crossroads Fire Department was alerted to the fire at 2:21 a.m. after a neighbor noticed a glow in the distance as he was getting ready to leave for work.

Fire was already coming out of the roof when Drum arrived as the first person at the scene.  Firefighters from the Catawba Volunteer Fire Department and Sherrills Ford/Terrell Fire and Rescue were also dispatched.

“We battled that thing for over an hour before we were able to get it under control,” Drum said. “The fire was so big it was just hard to get a handle on.”

Initially, the firefighters tried to suppress the fire from within the home until one of them stepped through the floor.

“The integrity of the house was too dangerous,” Drum said. “So I brought everybody out.”

It took 28 firefighters and seven trucks to get the fire out.

The one-story house that Whistlehunt had purchased a year ago was destroyed.

“The interior is absolutely gutted,” Drum said. “It basically just destroyed the inside of the house.”

When Drum went through the house later, he said there was nothing inside except six or seven inches of ash. There wasn’t even a melted picture frame left to find, he said.

“That tells me how hot it was,” Drum said. “It destroyed everything.”

He said it was impossible to determine which room was which without Whistlehunt there to tell them.

“I’m really upset. Everything I had was in that house,” Whistlehunt said. “There is nothing left at all.”

All he had left was the Petro Express work uniform he was wearing.

“I had a bunch of non-replaceable things,” he said.

The most valuable things to Whistlehunt were things his father left him when he died two years ago.

The fire didn’t affect him alone. His mother’s water was connected through Whistlehunt’s house.

“They can’t even live there without water,” he said of his family next door.

Investigators spent all day Friday searching for clues about the nature of the fire. Even then, they couldn’t determine where the fire originated due to the extent of damage, Yaussy said.

Roy Brown with the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office said there are people of interest, but no suspects at this time.

Catawba County Assistant Attorney Chris Cordes said North Carolina does not have a statute that directly relates to hate crimes. He said an arson fire that is a hate crime escalates the felony charges.

“It definitely makes it more serious,” he said.

For example, he said setting a church on fire is a Class E felony, while burning a home under construction is a Class H felony. A class A felony is the most severe in the scale.

The investigation is ongoing.