Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Fourteen years later the OSU fire is still a cold case

I was looking through some old letters to my family and noticed this one, April 19, 2003, and I wondered what had happened with the investigation into this tragedy: 

 "I don't think our latest tragedy here would have made your news, but 5 students died in a house fire on the campus early last Sunday (13th) a.m. Actually, only 2 were OSU, the other 3 were Ohio University (Athens, OH). Many still hospitalized. An old house with 12 bedrooms that the kids just love to rent, close to campus. Celebrating one of the guys’ 21st birthday, so everyone had been drinking. Happened about 3 or 4 a.m. Now they've decided it was arson, so people are really upset. Will be a big murder investigation--maybe the biggest Columbus has had. All the bios in the paper indicated they were all really good kids, but if you combine the gases and smoke inhalation with the fact that they may have not been as alert as possible, it was lethal. One young OU girl was from Dublin, north of here, and 1200 people came to her funeral yesterday.  The smoke was so dense the firemen had trouble finding them.  One girl was rescued unconscious by the fireman lying on top of her to protect her and scooting her by looping his arms under her.  But he didn’t know there was another student also in the room--and had barely found her."

Then it was 5 years. http://www.10tv.com/article/victims-legacies-live

The Dispatch caught up with the survivors 10 years later. http://www.dispatch.com/article/20130413/NEWS/304139720

Now it's fourteen and it's a cold case.  Families of the deceased still stay in touch and try to make life good in memory of their loved ones.
http://nbc4i.com/2017/04/13/still-no-answers-14-years-after-ohio-state-university-fatal-fire/




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