93-Year-Old Froze to Death Inside Home

[Chiefaholic]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090126/...frozen_indoors

93-year-old froze to death, owed big utility bill
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Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print Mon Jan 26, 3:32 pm ET Play Video AP – WW II Vet freezes to death inside his own home BAY CITY, Mich. – A 93-year-old man froze to death inside his home just days after the municipal power company restricted his use of electricity because of unpaid bills, officials said.

Marvin E. Schur died "a slow, painful death," said Kanu Virani, Oakland County's deputy chief medical examiner, who performed the autopsy.

Neighbors discovered Schur's body on Jan. 17. They said the indoor temperature was below 32 degrees at the time, The Bay City Times reported Monday.

"Hypothermia shuts the whole system down, slowly," Virani said. "It's not easy to die from hypothermia without first realizing your fingers and toes feel like they're burning."

Schur owed Bay City Electric Light & Power more than $1,000 in unpaid electric bills, Bay City Manager Robert Belleman told The Associated Press on Monday.

A city utility worker had installed a "limiter" device to restrict the use of electricity at Schur's home on Jan. 13, Belleman said. The device limits power reaching a home and blows out like a fuse if consumption rises past a set level. Power is not restored until the device is reset.

The limiter was tripped sometime between the time of installation and the discovery of Schur's body, Belleman said. He didn't know if anyone had made personal contact with Schur to explain how the device works.

Schur's body was discovered by neighbor George Pauwels Jr.

"His furnace was not running, the insides of his windows were full of ice the morning we found him," Pauwels told the newspaper.

Belleman said city workers keep the limiter on houses for 10 days, then shut off power entirely if the homeowner hasn't paid utility bills or arranged to do so.

He said Bay City Electric Light & Power's policies will be reviewed, but he didn't believe the city did anything wrong.

"I've said this before and some of my colleagues have said this: Neighbors need to keep an eye on neighbors," Belleman said. "When they think there's something wrong, they should contact the appropriate agency or city department."

Schur had no children and his wife had died several years ago.

Bay City is on Saginaw Bay, just north of the city of Saginaw in central Michigan.

___

Information from: The Bay City Times, http://www.mlive.com/bay-city

[Mr. Plow]

Originally Posted by bowener

Read this from another source. This is a sad day in age.

What makes it worse is this:



He died for nothing at all. All it would have taken was a rep of the electric company actually knocking on the front door.

Link

That is horrible.

[Ebolapox]

Originally Posted by Lex Luthor

Marvin E. Schur will certainly never make that mistake again.

he schur won't



sorry... couldn't resist.

that's sad though.

[Ebolapox]

Originally Posted by bowener

Read this from another source. This is a sad day in age.

What makes it worse is this:



He died for nothing at all. All it would have taken was a rep of the electric company actually knocking on the front door.

Link

[Bob Dole]

Originally Posted by bowener

Read this from another source. This is a sad day in age.

What makes it worse is this:



He died for nothing at all. All it would have taken was a rep of the electric company actually knocking on the front door.

Link

Or, as mentioned, one of his "concerned" neighbors not to expect the government/utility to take care of their fellow human being.