i found out yesterday that my real dad passed away Thursday night.. they say he might have been smoking in bed and was under the influence of pain pills, and passed out with the cigarette still burning, but we wont know for sure until tommorrow. Services are Monday at 10, but im going down to LA tommorrow.. please keep me and all of our family in your prayers.
Village East resident killed in apartment fire
By ROBERT MORRIS
HOUMA — A Thursday-night fire in a Village East apartment killed the man who lived there, authorities said.
Shane Pellegrin, 40, was found dead as firefighters battled a blaze in his apartment on Industrial Avenue A, just around the corner from the Village East Volunteer Fire Department and near the Prospect Street bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway.
When firefighters arrived, the apartment was already filled with heavy smoke and flames, said Village East Volunteer Fire Department Chief Herbert Fitch. They broke through the door to enter the apartment and quickly doused the fire coming from the bedroom, but never heard any shouting or movement to indicate someone was inside until they found Pellegrin’s body, Fitch said.
Investigators determined that the fire was mostly confined to Pellegrin’s bed, and the man was known to be a heavy smoker, said Donald Carter, supervisor of the arson division at the State Fire Marshal’s office. Autopsy results will not be available until Saturday, so it the cause of Pellegrin’s death was not immediately available, Carter said.
Though he declined to estimate the cost of the damages, Fitch said the building probably remains structurally sound, though the apartment will have to be gutted. The flame damage was heaviest in the apartment near the bedroom, and parts of the living room were relatively unscathed. Some of the other apartments may have minor smoke damage, Fitch said.
The fire brought more than 30 volunteer firefighters from Village East, Bayou Blue and Coteau. Their pumper trucks and numerous sheriff’s vehicles crowded the narrow road leading to the apartment building.
The tin-sided apartment building has the appearance of a converted warehouse. A thick stand of tall trees shrouds the man’s downstairs corner apartment, and a chain-link fence guards the driveway leading to the building.
Neighbors and residents gathered in clusters in the road as firefighters fought the blaze and investigated it afterward. Emily Martin said she moved into the apartments about two weeks ago on the same day as Pellegrin, but had quickly identified him as a friendly neighbor. The man told her and her parents, Kenneth and Peggy Martin of Thibodaux, that he was a former captain of 200-ton ships but had been injured on the job and subsequently disabled.
“As long as we were cleaning, he was talking,” Peggy Martin said. “He was real talkative. He had a lot of good stories. He was always there to help, because it’s not too often you find many people so friendly.”
Pellegrin could still get around despite his disability, and frequently came over to talk and help while the Martins were moving their daughter in. He had given the family his cell-phone number, in case any of them ever needed anything.
When she noticed the fire coming from his apartment Thursday night, Emily tried calling Pellegrin’s cell phone, but got no answer. She then called her parents, who contacted Pellegrin’s mother.
Emily last saw Pellegrin two nights before the fire, she said. Her family had helped him trim some of the thick growth from around the entrance to his apartment, and he wanted to know if he could put some of his patio furniture in front of her apartment.
“He was excited to find a place so neat. That apartment was darling, so cute inside,” Peggy Martin said. “Shane had big plans. He was going to have a barbecue out there.”
-Daddy's Little Girl
