Palmdale Youth Believed Dead in Power Line Fire

A Palmdale boy is believed to have been killed when a he touched a power line, igniting the tree that neighbors say he had been climbing.

Firefighters went to the 38300 block of Maureen Street in Palmdale after residents reported a loud explosion and fire before 8 p.m. Thursday, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said. County firefighters found a charred body about 30 feet up in the tree.

The body has not been identified because it was so badly burned, said Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the county coroner’s office. Officials believe, however, that the victim was Robert Putnam, a 13-year-old boy whose house is next door to the tree.

Neighbors said Robert sometimes climbed the tree, which is in a neighbor’s back yard.

“He’d go up there sometimes when he was angry or mad,” said Kath Forystek, a next-door neighbor whose son James is Robert’s schoolmate at Cactus Elementary School.

Carrier said coroner’s officials cannot confirm an identity or cause of death until they check the boy’s dental records and perform an autopsy today.

The victim is thought to have been electrocuted as well as burned, but no witnesses or investigators could explain how the accident occurred or how he came in contact with the line.

Several members of Robert’s family were standing in front of their house with Forystek when the fire began, she said.

She ran into her house and tried to call 911, but the phone was not working. Her son, James, then ran to a neighbor’s home to call for help.

As firefighters put out the blaze in the tree--which touched power lines that ran between the rows of single-story houses on the street--Robert’s family combed the neighborhood for him, but did not find him.

Neighbors said they thought the missing boy had gone to a market with his mother or had climbed the tree, ignited it accidentally and then ran off.

Robert was last seen playing with a dog in his back yard about an hour before the fire, neighbors said, and he did not seem angry or upset. “He was a great kid, very adventurous, not afraid of anything,” Kath Forystek said.