Couple and dog killed in house fire

WSLS News Staff and Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: April 28, 2008

UPDATE Monday 3:32 a.m.

Campbell County authorities released Sunday the names of two people killed in a Saturday morning house fire.

Joseph Toms, 55, and Linda Ruth Toms, 58, lived in the 600 block of Leewood Road, just off Dearing Ford Road in Lynch Station.

Capt. L.T. Guthrie, with the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office, said investigators will be at the house today to start searching for the fire’s cause.

“Looking at it (Saturday,) there’s really no point of origin that jumps out at you just looking at it,” Guthrie said.

Also killed in the fire was the couple’s dog, Gizmo, which Guthrie described as a shih tzu.

Autopsies have yet to be performed, but Guthrie said he was “sure (the deaths were) related to the fire.”

Firefighters responded to a 911 call at 7 a.m. Saturday morning and found the home fully engulfed. Neighbors told the News & Advance that the only thing identifying the structure in the midst of the inferno as a house was the chimney, which later fell.

The fire burned the home to the ground, leaving just the brick foundation and a deck.

Guthrie said he though the fire started between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. and could have been burning inside the home for some time before intensifying once a hole opened, allowing more air to enter and fuel the flames.

“I’ve really never seen a house burned up like this one. It just burned completely up,” Guthrie said Saturday.

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UPDATE Sunday 1:20 p.m.

Police have now released the names of the two victims killed in yesterday’s house fire.  They are 55-year-old Joseph Toms and 58-year-old Linda Ruth Toms.

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UPDATE 9:55 p.m.

A Saturday morning fire killed a Lynch Station couple inside their Leewood Road home, leaving nothing but the foundation and a deck standing.
The victims’ names were not released, pending notification of family members.
Capt. L.T. Guthrie, with the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office, said a 911 call came in at 7:02 a.m., and firefighters arrived on the scene at 658 Leewood Road, just off Dearing Ford Road, at about 7:10.
Even then, the house was beyond recovery.
Will Copes, a firefighter in Lynchburg, lives right across the street. He said he had seen the house from the outside an hour before the call and hadn’t observed any sign of fire.
“At 6 o’clock, I left to go hunting, and I didn’t see anything,” he said.
Copes’ wife, Elizabeth, said she made the 911 call when she looked outside and saw the inferno.
“I couldn’t even tell that it was definitely the house, I mean it was so much fire,” she said.
“All that you could tell that was still a house was just the chimney. Everything else was just flames.”
Guthrie said nothing indicates that the fire started before Will Copes walked by.
“We have to believe it started between 6 and 7:02,” he said.
He added that the fire could have been burning for a while inside, but it probably intensified once a hole opened up, allowing for more oxygen to enter.
He also said, the day being Saturday, most of the people that would have seen the fire were likely asleep.
Also complicating things was the rural nature of the neighborhood.
Guthrie said that, and the amount of woodwork in the house, added up to the fatal outcome.
“I’ve really never seen a house burned up like this one. It just burned completely up,” Guthrie said.
Shirley West lives with her husband, Aubrey, up the street from the couple, and said neither of them saw any smoke or fire.
She said they were “pretty good friends” with the couple.
“Last Sunday, actually, we were just sitting out here on the porch,” she said.
“It’s just hard to believe they’re gone.”
She said the couple didn’t leave the area much, but that the man would walk around the area with his dog, Gizmo.
“They just kind of stayed around the house, he liked to work in his garden,” she said.
Aubrey West said he didn’t think anything in the house would have caused the fire.
“He was a particular type person,” he said. “If something in the house was wrong, he was going to have it fixed.”
The dog was in the home at the time, and also died in the fire.
The fire is still under investigation, and Guthrie said there was no cause readily apparent.
He said there was no evidence the fire was set intentionally, and it appeared to have started from inside the house.
“We’re still in the preliminary stages of (the investigation),” he said.

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A house fire kills two people and their dog early Saturday morning.

The Campbell County Sheriff’s Office says they got the call at 7:02 a.m. for a fire at a home on Leewood Road.

They are not releasing the names of the couple killed at this point, until they can notify their family. The couple’s dog was in the home at the time and also died in the fire.

The fire is under investigation.