Elderly veteran killed trying to save burning mobile home in Harrison Township
A homeowner in Harrison Township was killed after his mobile home caught fire Tuesday afternoon.
The victim was a military veteran in his 80s who lived alone.
The property was thoroughly ravaged by the fire. Two of the victim's neighbors said they saw him carrying out items on fire and begged him not to go back in.
Sadly, the homeowner did not listen and did not survive.
"He was in there for 10 minutes and I knew he was gone," said Al Moore, a neighbor.
A cloud of smoke could be seen above the Harrison Court mobile home park near Henry B Joy Blvd joy, just west of I-94 in Harrison Township.
"The smoke was so bad it just burned, you just got two breaths of it and you were just (done)," said Richard Moore, who lives directly next door.
Richard said he first heard glass breaking and then saw his neighbor trying to desparately to save his burning home.
"I seen him going in the side door and there was smoke rolling out," he added. "So I picked up my phone, started calling 911, ran outside."
The neighbor on the other side was Al Moore.
"Couldn’t get within 10 feet of the house. There was so much smoke and it was all coming out on one side and that’s the door that he went in," Al said.
While they waited for the fire department to arrive, the neighbors said things went from bad to worse.
"Just before they got here, flames started shooting out of the roof," Richard said. "It just really went."
When the flames burned out, they both took stock of what was lost.
"He was a really good guy. He was a good neighbor. He was a good friend," Al said. "It’s just sad."
An investigation into the cause of the fire remains ongoing.
While the victim lived alone, firefighters are still in the process of notifying the family and are not naming him publicly at this time, according to the fire department.
The majority of the damage was restricted to the one house, but the intensity of the heat from the inferno caused the siding of Richard's house to melt.