‘Come On, What’s Missing Here?’: Family Outraged After Firefighters Assure Them Everyone Escaped Burning Building—Only for Son to Find His Father’s Lifeless Body Hours Later
After hearing her brother Sam Nash’s apartment building had caught fire last Tuesday, Debra Nash rushed to his home on West Capitol Drive in Milwaukee.
“You know, pretty much panic, like, where’s my brother?” Nash told CBS 58. “I don’t see my brother. Where’s my brother?”
A firefighter assured her that all of the building’s tenants were out, she claims.
“To receive that kind of sense of relief that the building was clear and not have to think about my brother being in there and then receive a call later on to say he was in there,” Nash said. “Come on, what’s missing here?”
At around 4 p.m., nearly two hours after the fire started, the scene was cleared. Nash still hadn’t heard from her brother. Her nephew decided to investigate, entering his father’s third-story apartment, where he made a grisly discovery.
Sam Nash was lying on the floor of his apartment, unconscious. His son attempted to give the 71-year-old CPR, then ran downstairs to notify firefighters. Nash was declared dead later that afternoon at a local hospital, about two-and-a-half hours after the fire started.
“If my family had not entered that building, my brother would probably still be lying dead in that building,” Debra Nash said.
Nash said she last spoke to her brother around 2:20 p.m. She had not been able to reach him that morning and was concerned.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry, little sister, I love you,’” Nash said. “I had a doctor’s appointment, but I’m home now.”
Milwaukee police said the fire broke out at around that same time.
“How did you guys miss my brother?” Nash asked. “How could that happen? That’s like, awful.”
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the city’s fire department has failed to find bodies in the past. An investigation as to why Nash wasn’t discovered is underway, but Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said it was not clear his firefighters had made a mistake.
“We are dissecting every bit of information,” he said. “At this time, we are not certain this could be categorized as a missed search.”
Debra Nash said she isn’t sure how that could be true.
“I would like to know what happened with my brother. What step was missed?” she said. “Let’s make sure that this doesn’t happen to another loved one.”
Police have labeled the fire as suspicious and are searching for a “known suspect.”
Sam Nash was the glue that kept her family together, said his sister.
A veteran of U.S. Marine Corps, Nash recently retired from the Wisconsin Center, an event venue in Milwaukee.
“He was the one that watched over everyone and made sure everyone was OK,” Debra Nash said.
She recalled his support as she worked toward obtaining her substance abuse counselor license.
Sam Nash paid for her exam, checked in to make sure she was studying and went to her home to celebrate when she received the license. She remembered the two laughing together that day and him congratulating her on the accomplishment.