After a home was destroyed in a fire last week on Leaf Hawk Lane, a man’s body was found in a van on the same property the next day.
Det. Brian Shrader with the Brown County Sheriff’s Department said last week that the death did not appear immediately suspicious or criminal in nature and that it was not connected to the fire.
Coroner Earl Piper will work to identify the man using DNA over the next couple of weeks.
He said the man, in his mid-50s to mid-60s, had been dead for at least six months.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]“This is nothing but one big question mark at this point. We don’t have the answers we need,” he said at the scene last week.
“We have a lot of assumptions.”
Piper said the man’s body had gone through “extensive” decomposition and that he’d have to use DNA to identify him if he is unable to find the man’s dentist to obtain his dental records.
Shrader said that an identification card was found next to the body, which was in the front seat of the old GMC van. The van’s frame had sunken into the ground and the windows were all dirty, making it difficult to see inside. Police wrapped it in orange biohazard tape after the body was removed.
Until the man is positively identified using scientific means, his name will not be released.
Piper said the man died of natural causes. He didn’t find any traumatic injuries on the remains. He said an autopsy will not be done.
“You get a body in this state, it makes everything extremely difficult as far as figuring out what actually happened. It’s essentially a natural cause-type death,” he said.
Piper and police were called back to the scene of the house fire in the 900 block of Leaf Hawk Lane on Nov. 20 after the family of the homeowner went to the home.
“One of them just happened to look in the van,” Shrader said. That’s how authorities learned the man’s body was there.
Firefighters from all six volunteer departments had battled the blaze that destroyed the home just before dawn on Nov. 19. A neighbor had reported the fire, which was visible at the top of Schooner/Kelley Hill on State Road 46 West.
Firefighters were initially concerned that a person was in the home, because they were alerted that a vehicle was in the driveway, said Nick Kelp, chief of the Brown County (Nashville) Volunteer Fire Department.
“That, plus time of day, is usually a good indicator for possible victims in the structure if they’re not accounted for,” he said.
The van the body was found in did belong to the homeowner, Shrader said. However, she had been moved to a nursing home before the fire happened.
Shrader said the homeowner had been living on the property during part of the time the body was in the van.
The home was a total loss. The cinder-block structure of it was still standing, but otherwise, it was destroyed. No injuries were reported.
The cause of the fire was undetermined due to the amount of damage.
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All six volunteer fire departments in Brown County were dispatched to this fire on Leaf Hawk Lane because the time of day made it hard to get enough people to the scene, said Brown County (Nashville) volunteer fire Chief Nick Kelp. Even with calling all six fire departments, they only got about 15 people, he said.
Once they were back at the station, Kelp said they discussed how the response would have been different if they had paid firefighters. All fire departments in the county are run by volunteers.
“It would have shaved valuable minutes off the response time, which in this case was compared to time we could have spent searching for a possible fire victim,” Kelp said.
When they learned a vehicle was in the driveway, firefighters attempted to perform a search of the home in an area that was not yet burning. But the fire had been burning for some time before firefighters arrived, and it was taking down the structural integrity of the building, Kelp said. So they were unable to stay in the home long.
He estimated having paid firefighters could have shaved off around 10 minutes from their response time, “which is a long time while a fire is growing exponentially,” he said.
After the fire story hit social media, a debate began on the Brown County Democrat’s Facebook page about whether or not the county needs paid firefighters.
“Being there 10 minutes earlier is not worth paying fire fighters to set at the station 24 hrs a day,” wrote Brenda Fowler Austin.
“10 minutes is a really long time when you are a child hiding in a closet because your house is on fire. 10 minutes is a really long time when you and your family hang upside down in a car as blood drips down your face and you can’t get out. 10 minutes is too long in most cases,” responded volunteer firefighter Hunter Riebl. “People have died waiting that 10 minutes and sometimes longer. We do everything we can to get there and help. But we all have normal jobs. We aren’t around when people need us. Someone needs to show up when a person calls 911. That doesn’t always happen.”
The fire post attracted 65 comments, most of them in support of finding a way to pay firefighters.
At the Nashville Town Council meeting on Nov. 21, Kelp repeated a plea he’s made before to the council for more financial help — if not paying firefighters, then increasing the amount they get from the town to pay their operating bills. The current annual contract from Nashville is $17,000, and that’s not enough to cover the insurance, Kelp said. The station also has a contract with the Washington Township trustee and advisory board.
The town council agreed to increase the contract amount for 2020 to $20,000, and town council member David Rudd volunteered to talk to the county commissioners about how to get Nashville and Washington Township the ability to form a partnership that could levy taxes specifically for firefighting.
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