Body found in burned Pendleton house

Published 11:27 am Monday, May 15, 2023

PENDLETON — Pendleton police are investigating a body that was inside a house that burned May 9 in a fire.

Pendleton Police Chief Chuck Byram said someone Sunday night contacted Sgt. Roger Youncs to report seeing a person go inside the house at 628 S. Main St. before the fire.

Youncs and Cpl. Nathan Bessette went inside the house Monday morning, Byram said, and found a body.

“As you can imagine, the scene was pretty ugly,” he said.

Pendleton Fire Chief Jim Critchley at the time of the blaze said the house was unoccupied.

The house is now a crime scene, and Byram said his department is working with the Oregon State Police Medical Examiner’s Division, arson team and crime lab to help identify the body and gather as much evidence and information as possible to find out what may have happened.

Byram said it was far too early to know if this was an accident or something else.

Firefighters were not aware that anyone had been present within the home at the time of the fire, and Critchley said that they made a command decision to fight the fire defensively.

“When we have a normal fire, house fire, and we can make entry, we do a primary search and a secondary search,” he said. “If you remember seeing the fire or hearing any of the gossip on (May 9), there was a whole bunch of debris on the ground of the house. All the windows were boarded up, when we tried to go in and we couldn’t get very far into the building because of the debris that was already down on the ground. It wasn’t safe for our firefighters.”

Critchley said he and his command team had interviewed neighbors and stationed hoses at every window and entry to the home with no signs of a person inside the blaze.

“We didn’t believe there was anyone inside during the fire,” he said. “We believed the opposite, that everyone left after some squatters had been evicted the week before the fire. With the debris the way it was, and the fact that the fire had been burning, I would say that the individual was not in a position to be saved. With all these factors, it’s unlikely we could have saved this person.”

Critchley emphasized this revelation already prompted him to invite an independent investigation of the fire department’s operations that night, and that he plans to amend certain practices with lessons learned to better combat structure fires in the future.