CHICAGO — A woman was found Friday morning fatally shot in the head in a house fire in the city’s Englewood neighborhood.

According to Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford, investigators have determined the fire to be “suspicious.”

Police said officers on patrol came across a small fire on the side of a house in the 6400 block of South Damen around 12:45 a.m. Friday. Police then requested the help of the Chicago Fire Department.

As emergency crews conducted a search, they discovered an unresponsive 32-year-old woman in the rear of the property with a gunshot wound in the back of the head.

She was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.

Racquel Adams had five daughters ranging from a toddler to their mid-teens. They will grow up without their mom, who Brian said is their hero and best friend.

“She was smart, she was intelligent, and most of all, she was a caring mother,” Brian Adams, Racquel’s father, said. “She loved her daughters. For my grandbabies to wake up to find out that their mother had passed is just horrendous.”

Brian said Racquel’s pride and joy were her girls.

He nicknamed his first-born daughter Rocky and said she truly was his rock.

“It’s still so surreal to me that my daughter’s gone and it was a cowardly thing that this person did,” Adams said.

Racquel’s dad said she lived in the home on S. Damien with her five daughters and her boyfriend. Family members said she dropped her girls off at their grandmother’s house, so they weren’t home when everything happened.

“I wish I could have been there,” Brian said. “I wish, you go through a lot of I wishes. It’s just so heart-wrenching to know that someone you raised, you changed their diapers, you kissed, you loved, is gone.”

No word on what may have caused the fire.

No one is in custody. Area One detectives are investigating the incident as a homicide.