A man was found dead outside an east side Owen Sound apartment where there was a fire Sunday afternoon, city police said in a news release.
“The circumstances of the death, including the apartment fire, are currently under investigation by the Office of the Coroner, The Ontario Fire (Marshal) and the Criminal Investigations Branch of the Owen Sound Police Service,” police said in the statement.
Police received multiple reports about the fire in the 1300 block of 3rd Avenue East at approximately 1:30 p.m. Sunday, police said.
“In addition to the fire, a deceased 58-year-old man was discovered on the sidewalk directly in front of the building,” police said .
Tenants at the scene Sunday said they saw a man lying in blood in front of the building.
The man, whom tenants said lived in the unit that was on fire, was unresponsive and was worked on by paramedics before being taken away in an ambulance, tenants said.
Police were interviewing people and firefighters were still at the scene late in the afternoon. A scorched third-floor doorway, accessible from a fire escape, was visible at the back of the red-brick apartment building.
A pair of running shoes and a large, dark red stain could be seen on the concrete walkway in front of the building. The covering from a third-floor dormer window, with a hole for an air conditioner vent, was on a roof below, a tenant noted.
There were also three or four knives on the ground in front of the building, including a large, yellow-handled utility knife, one that looked like a paring knife and a kitchen knife. Yellow police tape was around the building.
City firefighters responded to a report of a structure fire at the building at about 1:40 p.m. No one was in the third-floor apartment when firefighters entered it by forcing open an entrance door at the rear of the building, firefighters said.
“We knocked down fire burning in the hallway and proceeded through the kitchen and through the bedroom. Full blackout smoke conditions,” said acting Fire Capt. Brian Bridges, who was one of two firefighters who entered the building first.
The fire was in the hallway entrance, he said. There was smoke down to the floor and no flame was visible but they could feel the heat, he said. They put out the fire with a little water. Only that unit in the multi-unit building was damaged by heat and smoke, he said.
Bridges said a male tenant of the unit with the fire was injured but not from the fire. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
A cat in a locked bedroom in the burnt unit didn’t want to come out but was OK. It bit a firefighter’s gloved hand and that firefighter received treatment from paramedics at the scene, Bridges said.
Doug McEwen, a city fire department fire prevention inspector, said at the scene that as many as 10 firefighters responded to the call.
Tenants were asked to leave the building and not to go back inside, so they waited outside.
Sydney lives on the second floor, heard the fire alarm and spoke with another tenant who’d just called 911, who told her the fire was in the unit above her. She looked and saw smoke coming out of that unit.
“We were kind of panicking. We were knocking on all the doors making sure everybody knows it’s a real fire, that we have to evacuate the building.” Someone asked if anyone had checked on the two tenants of the unit on fire, whom they know as John and Johnny.
“I went up there . . . I opened their staircase door to their apartment. All the lights were out and it was filled with smoke. I called out a few times, like if anybody was home and if they knew that a fire was going on. And I didn’t get a response.”
Next, she saw one of the guys who lives in the attic apartment was on the concrete walkway at the front. Paramedics were performing CPR on him. He wasn’t moving. A group of tenants said they figured the man was in his 40s or 50s. None saw burn marks on him.
Police ask that witnesses, anyone with relevant video surveillance footage or who has information related to the investigation contact the Owen Sound Police Service at 519-376-1234.