Ventura Man Killed When Fire Breaks Out in Kitchen

A Ventura man died Thursday night when the small kitchen inside his midtown apartment caught fire and he was unable to escape, authorities said.

The man, whose name was withheld by police until his family could be notified, died about 6:40 p.m. inside a second-floor apartment at the corner of Poli and Crimea streets that overlooks Cemetery Park.

“I yelled his name and, ‘Are you in there?’ But there wasn’t an answer,” said Gregory Dyas, one of two neighbors who used garden hoses to fight the blaze before firefighters arrived.

Dyas was alerted to the fire when the smoke detector in his apartment, under the victim’s unit, went off. The alarms share the same wiring, and a detector in the victim’s apartment had activated.

When he reached the apartment, Dyas said, there were no flames outside but thick, black smoke was curling around the windows, including one small kitchen window that faces a common walkway.

Dyas tossed a heavy candle through one of the windows and yelled for his neighbor, but there was no response, he said. Another man who was walking by and saw the smoke rushed to the apartment and tried crawling inside but was driven back by dense smoke, Dyas said.

Fire officials said the victim, described as a burly man possibly in his late 30s, was found lying face up on the kitchen floor and was severely burned.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, but Ventura City Assistant Fire Chief Bill Rigg said it appeared the blaze was possibly a grease or oven fire. It was unclear whether the victim succumbed to smoke inhalation or was fatally burned.

“We very aggressively knocked out this fire, and when we put it out we found the victim,” Rigg said. The assistant chief said the victim’s clothes were completely burned.

More than a dozen firefighters fought the fire and contained it to the kitchen. Some minor smoke damage occurred in the living room and the apartment’s two bedrooms, officials said. A damage estimate was still being tallied Thursday night.

The fire forced the evacuation of several adjoining units and displaced, at least overnight, Dyas and his wife, Michelle. The couple said they planned to stay with friends and return home tonight.

Neighbors said the victim had lived at the 10-unit complex more than three years. They also said he worked at a locally based motorcycle magazine and had a 13-year-old son who would visit on weekends.

“He was real mild-mannered,” said Luke Burleson, another neighbor who hosed the blaze.