PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — A man died early Saturday morning inside the cab of a pickup truck in Wood County when the truck caught fire in the middle of a private cemetery.
The two men drove into the cemetery early Saturday morning and wound up getting stuck when their truck bottomed out on a tombstone.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Parkersburg Police Chief Joe Martin. “The truck got a center of balance off the ground on that tombstone and you could see where they had been trying to get it out.”
The tires were spinning as the driver attempted to get back onto the road. They went so long the tire caught fire, investigators said. The fire spread into the interior and burned the entire vehicle in the graveyard.
“The tire was burnt completely off the rim,” Martin said. “It destroyed the all of the interior and 90 percent of the exterior of the truck.”
The driver fled the scene and was caught a short time later not far away.
“He was very intoxicated,” said Martin.
He was so drunk he was unable to answer any questions from officers and actually had to be taken to the hospital according to Martin. So far he has not been charged as investigators await the Medical Examiner’s report.
Investigators theorized the victim, who was left at the scene by the driver, may have also been equally drunk and was passed out in the cab of the truck and didn’t know to get out. The body of the victim has been sent to the Medical Examiner’s Office for positive identification and to determine an exact cause of death.
“I think the level of their intoxication was so severe, I think they were just lost,” said Martin of how the pair wound up in the graveyard.
Police say they believe they know the identify of the victim, but have not released the names of either man pending the outcome of the autopsy.
The state Fire Marshal’s Office tweeted Saturday afternoon the fire would be classified as accidental.