What Happened Right after the 911 Call?

Recent posts have looked more closely at the circumstances surrounding my brother Mark’s truck fire that are unclear or confusing in the report of the N.Y. State Police investigation and related documents (see posts of July 30, August 30, September 29, and October 30, 2018, and official documents attached to this blog).  As is clear from those posts, there are a number of significant unanswered questions that the State Police investigation should have either probed or probed more fully.  This post considers what happened in the time between the 911 call and the arrival of the first emergency worker.

According to her witness statement, my brother's wife Susan was on the phone when she saw Mark’s truck on fire in the field across from their house.  As she explains, she “immediately called 911” and “then went out to the fire.”  She continues as follows: “I saw Mark crawling away from the truck, and I tried to put the flames on him out.”  She then says that she asked him, “‘What did you do?’ and he said, ‘I did nothing.’”  N.Y. State Trooper Chandler, who took Susan’s statement, began it at 11:30 p.m. (about thirty-five minutes after the 911 call) and ended it at 11:45 p.m.

It would appear that only a few minutes elapsed between Susan’s 911 call and the arrival of the first emergency worker, Cheryl Simcox, an EMT and a neighbor living on Cross Road, which intersects Whalen Rd. and is also located across from the field where Mark lay.  In her witness statement, Cheryl indicates that she heard Killbuck VFD being toned out for a vehicle fire on Whalen Rd. at 10:55 (presumably immediately after the 911 call was made) and that after getting dressed, she was “on the scene within two minutes.”  She goes on to say that Susan “was at the end of the driveway.”  Cheryl adds that Susan exclaimed, “Come on, we have to go put him out, that’s him on fire in the field.”

Susan does not mention in her witness statement that she discontinued her attempt to put the flames out on Mark and her query to him about what had happened (“What did you do?”) and then withdrew to the driveway.  As is evident from Cheryl’s statement quoted above, Susan wanted the two of them to go and extinguish the flames on Mark.  Susan clearly had already seen the truck burning while she was on the phone inside the house.

Had something further occurred while Susan herself went out to Mark on the scene of the fire?  When I asked Cheryl about her experience on the scene that night, she mentioned that she was surprised to see Susan standing at the end of the driveway.  N.Y.S.P. Inv. Edward Kalfas, however, makes no reference to this matter in his narrative in the police report.

Neither Susan nor Cheryl mentions in her witness statement how high the flames on my brother actually were.  But Cheryl told me that Mark was engulfed in flames two-feet high when she arrived on the scene (see also post of September 22, 2012).  According to Cheryl’s witness statement, Susan told her that she had tried to bat the flames out on Mark “with the white sweatshirt she was holding.”  Cheryl mentions that Susan also repeated that same thing to Trooper Chandler in her presence (“I tried to put him out with that sweatshirt.”).

Yet in her witness statement, Cheryl observes that the white sweatshirt, which Susan had put on a counter close by, “had a very light scent of smoke but was clean, no soot or skin on it.”  One would like some explanation for this considerable discrepancy.  But, once again, N.Y.S.P. Inv. Edward Kalfas makes no reference to this matter in his narrative in the police report.