| A fire in a small mobile home left one man dead Sunday morning, according to Riverhead Town Police.
The fire was discovered at about 5:17 a.m. in a mobile home on Zion Street in Aquebogue, off Hubbard Avenue, according to Riverhead Fire Department. The complete back half of the mobile home was destroyed by the blaze, according to Fire Chief Kevin Davis. The home was fully involved in flames when volunteers arrived, he said, adding that eighty volunteers responded to the scene.
The occupant of the home, Jonathan Childress, 38, was found inside and pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
"He was a good guy," said neighbor Willie Turner. "He used to work on cars all the time. I grew up with him on this street."
He said Mr. Childress grew up in a home adjacent to the mobile home and was a self-employed auto mechanic.
Mr. Turner and another neighbor, Shawana Blount, said they weren't aware of the fire until they saw the flashing lights of the fire engines in their windows.
The fire is not considered suspicious, according to police, and is being blamed on electrical causes that fire marshal Dave Andruszkiewicz hopes to educate people about in order that such fires not be repeated.
Namely, Mr. Childress had an electric space heater hooked up to an extension cord, the fire marshal said.
"The amperage that the space heater generates is more than an extension cord can handle," Mr. Andruszkiewicz said. "People should try to refrain from using any type of extension cord."
Mr. Andruszkiewicz said its appears the space heater shorted out and the cord got hot and melted into the carpet, then set a nearby love seat on fire.
Mr. Childress also didn't have smoke detectors in the home, the fire marshal said. Although he had lived at the site with a girlfriend in the past, he was the only one present at the time of the fire, police said. |
