Smoking in bed may have caused mobile home fire

Smoking in bed may have caused mobile home fire

Smoking in bed may have led to mobile-home fire

VIENNA

Police and fire officials believe the fire late Saturday in the Four Seasons mobile-home park that killed Richard L. Baglier, 65, was the result of smoking in bed, and the state fire marshal’s office has ruled it accidental.

Baglier, who ran jewelry stores in Warren and Hubbard, was found dead inside his trailer at 15 Lakewood Drive NE at 11:48 p.m., about 20 minutes after a 911 call from a neighbor alerted authorities to the fire. The park is across state Route 193 from the Youngstown- Warren Regional Airport.

The neighbor, two firefighters and a Vienna police officer were at the home within a few minutes of the 911 call, but the heat and fire made rescue impossible, said Vienna Fire Chief Richard Brannon.

The two firefighters — Assistant Chief Mike Hagood and Capt. Dennis Greenwood — responded in their personal vehicles while traveling home from Sharon Speedway and used a metal pole found at the scene to break down the trailer door.

Fire trucks from the Vienna Fire Department and the 910th Airlift Wing of the Youngstown Air Reserve Station arrived just after that and extinguished the fire, Brannon said.

Baglier’s body was found just inside an exit door not far from his bedroom, where investigators believe the fire started.

Brannon said the death is upsetting, knowing that Baglier had nearly made it out of the trailer.

“They tried to break windows, and there was smoke coming out of the door,” Brannon said. The fire was extinguished pretty quickly, but Brannon thinks it had been burning quite a while before firefighters arrived. The home most likely is a total loss.

There were no smoke detectors in the trailer.

Personnel with the state fire marshal’s office investigated Saturday night and again Monday. An investigator told police the fire appeared to start in the bedroom and may have resulted from smoking from a pipe in bed.

Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk, Trumbull County coroner, said a ruling on the cause and manner of death are pending the completion of the fire marshal’s investigation. But based on the amount of carbon monoxide in Baglier’s lung’s, Dr. Germaniuk said he appears to have died from smoke inhalation. Dr. Germaniuk found no evidence on the body of trauma or foul play, such as a stab wound or gunshot, he said.