Updated at 2:20 p.m. on Feb. 22
The Ontario Provincial Police have identified the body found in the mobile home that burned to ground Feb. 20.
Police have confirmed Bruce William Turcotte, 48, died as a result of smoke inhalation. Foul play is not a factor, and the scene has been released.
Updated 12:51 p.m. on Feb. 21
The Ontario Provincial Police said they still have not been able to positively identify the victim of the fire, or whether it was the resident of the home.
If no one is visaully able to identify the body, police will have to use DNA or dental records, said OPP Const. Shawn Fougere, community services officer for the North Bay detachment.
Once officers are able to positively ID the body, they will release the name.
Original story
A man that neighbours say was in his 40s is dead following a fire that gutted a mobile home in a trailer park located on Park Drive in Markstay-Warren.
Firefighters found the victim's body in the rear portion of the home, said Markstay-Warren Fire Chief Mark Whynott.
“We believe there was a dog with the owner at the time of the fire, and we have not been able to locate it, so we are under the assumption that the dog was still inside with the owner,” he said.
The fire call came in at about 10 p.m. Feb. 20, he said. Upon arrival at the scene, the mobile home was fully engulfed.
An OPP officer sits in his vehicle in front of a charred mobile home located within a trailer park on Park Drive in the municipality of Markstay-Warren on Feb. 21. A man and possibly a dog was killed in the fire, according to fire officials. Photo by Arron Pickard.
It was sometime between 11 and 11:30 p.m. that firefighters were able to determine that the resident was still inside the home.
Today, fire officials and police are focusing their attention on removal of the body, Whynott told Northern Life in a mid-morning interview. He said it was anticipated the body would be removed by this evening.
Trailer park resident Terie Elliott said she was returning home from a doctor's appointment at about 9:40 p.m. and the home was already on fire. She immediately called 911.
“(The fire) was just nasty, and there was no going in,” she said. “When I called 911, the fire department had already been dispatched.”
Elliott said she moved into the trailer park two years ago and didn't know the victim well.
It's a quiet community, and everyone mostly stays to themselves, she said. Residents say hi to one another when they see each other on the road, but that's about it.
That being said, the fact one of her neighbours is dead is still “really sad.”
“I know he had no running water, and the talk around the trailer park was that he was going to get the fire in his wood stove hot enough to melt the water in his pipes,” she said.
Fire officials have not pinpointed a cause of the fire, and the investigation continues. The fire is not deemed suspicious at this time.
