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Two SAMs die in fire near N.C. State
Two students die in fire near N.C. State University
The Associated Press
October 09, 2005
Future lab results and interviews will help investigators determine what started a fire that killed two North Carolina State University students in an off-campus apartment.
Fire investigators wrapped up their investigation inside the charred duplex by Saturday, but had not found the cause of Friday's blaze, Raleigh Fire Marshal Larry Stanford said.
The fire happened during fall break on the campus just blocks away. On Sunday, friends of the dead students slowly assembled an informal memorial by stacking up flowers and photos on an outside wall of the duplex.
"It just really saddens me," neighbor and N.C. State employee Millie Herget said Sunday.
The blaze killed Mark Brandon Davis, 22, of High Point, and Cody Pilkington, 19, of Grifton. Davis was a senior and Pilkington a sophomore. They were members of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.
Eight others, including seven residents of the duplex, fled as the building filled with smoke, soot and flame.
The fire apparently started next to a sofa in the ground-floor game room of one half of the duplex, Stanford said. Some of the fraternity's members gathered there Thursday night to play pool and watch the Wolfpack's football team beat Georgia Tech, said Elisabeth Condrone, a fraternity member's mother.
Flames never reached the second-floor bedrooms, but smoke from the blaze appear to have killed Davis and Pilkington before they could escape.
The house had smoke alarms but no sprinkler system, Stanford said. Raleigh requires landlords to equip rental homes with smoke alarms; tenants are responsible for keeping the alarms in working condition.
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