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Coroner issues the cause of death for a man found in an apartment fire in The Plains earlier this year
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio — The coroner has determined that a man found dead in an apartment building in The Plains that caught fire earlier this year died from the fire itself.
In a verdict released Tuesday morning, the Athens County coroner listed the cause of Donald Stoyer’s death as “inhalation of products of combustion.”
Stoyer’s body was found in his apartment unit after firefighters responded to the fire on May 5 at 15 Cross St.
Andrew Joseph Martin, who lived at the apartment building, was indicted a week after the fire on a charge of failure to provide notice of a change of address. Martin is a sex offender and is required to notify the local sheriff when he moves.
He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in June and the judge ordered a mental evaluation. The case is still pending.
It is not clear whether law enforcement is looking at Martin in connection with the fire.
Athens County Sheriff Rodney Smith said the investigation into the fire remains active but he could not comment further.
The cause of the fire has not yet been publicly released. The state fire marshal’s office is conducting this investigation. WOUB reached out to the media contact for the fire marshal to find out if the investigation has been completed but did not receive a response by the time this story was published.
That Stoyer, who was 73, died from the fire likely comes as no surprise. But it was possible he could have died from some other cause before the fire.
The report from the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy says the evidence points to the fire.
Stoyer had dense soot deposits lining his windpipe and bronchi, the passages that branch off from the windpipe and carry air into and out of the lungs.
He also had high levels of carbon monoxide in his blood, according to a toxicology report. Carbon monoxide is a byproduct of combustion, and when inhaled it binds to red blood cells and starves the body of oxygen.
The pathologist found no indications that something other than the fire could have caused Stoyer’s death.