Update – Police are now investigating the case as a suicide. NewsChannel 3 will post more information as it becomes available.Two neighbors tried to rescue a man from his mobile home as flames and smoke ate up its roof yesterday afternoon.
It happened on Tuesday, September 25, 2012, at about 1 p.m. Officials say fire and EMS teams responded to a mobile home fire in Carolina Village, where they found 46-year-old Billy Ray Clark deceased.
A neighbor spoke to NewsChannel 3 about the fire:
"Started stumbling around, he got low and he found him, and me and him drug him out and got him and as soon as we got out to the porch I could tell," said Matthew Olah, who lives next door. "We just stopped. I was like, 'Oh my God.'"
Olah tried to save his neighbor and friend after hearing a boom from next door Tuesday afternoon.
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One confirmed death in Moyock mobile home fire
"Next thing I know, we seen flames. We ran over there," Olah said.
The man was home by himself. Someone called 911, but Olah took action before back up arrived.
"We grabbed the hose, and try to bust the windows out and try and put it out," Olah said. "And then his wife runs up and says, 'Oh he's in there,' so we're trying to find him."
Olah went through the front door, and the victim's wife had told him to look in the bedroom.
"You couldn't see, you couldn't see nothing," Olah said.
The victim was in the living room, but when Olah pulled him out, he realized it was too late.
"I'm just heartbroken because a good friend of mine is gone like that," Olah said.
Neighbors say the man lived on Moon Circle in Moyock with his wife and children. Their heartbreak over his death is unimaginable. But it's sadness that many neighbors are feeling as well.
"Somebody like that, I mean we're right here. We see him every day," Olah said. "I mean, yeah he's a good guy, he's a truck driver, he's a good man, that's all I can say."
Investigators are still figuring out how the fire started.
