By Delphine Schrank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 26, 2007

A late-night fire Saturday killed a disabled and homeless man who had been staying in a garage in Northeast Washington, fire officials and neighbors said yesterday.

The man, whose identity was not released pending notification of relatives, was found in the burned garage in the 1900 block of Capitol Avenue NE. Officials said electrical problems led to the fire; a television, stove and space heater were all connected to an extension cord that overheated.

Friends and neighbors said the victim was a former mechanic in his 50s who used a walker after suffering a stroke two years ago. In the past few years, when he was not in homeless shelters, the man slept inside the detached garage of a longtime friend, William Buford, his bed tucked in a corner near a vintage 1947 Plymouth.

Buford, 61, said he was sleeping in his house a few feet away when a tenant awakened him to alert him to the fire.

"He was just a good person," said Buford, tearing up on his front porch yesterday afternoon. "He was my friend."

Before his stroke, the man helped around Buford's house, painting or doing odd jobs. He and Buford were hoping to fix up the old Plymouth before sending it to a shop for restoration, Buford said.

Alan Etter, a D.C. fire department spokesman, said that the roof of the garage had collapsed by the time firefighters arrived about 11 p.m. Several minutes into battling the flames, firefighters were told by a resident that a homeless man might be trapped, but they had to keep working outside because the fire was so severe, Etter said.

Yesterday, inside the blackened concrete-brick walls of the garage, an upturned canvas tennis shoe lay among charred planks of wood and bricks, a twisted bed frame and the rusty carcass of the car, its windows smashed and its roof beaten concave from the fallen ceiling. From a pile of bricks poked the legs of the victim's walker.

Winston Peterson, 55, said he had visited with the man just a few hours before the fire. "He was a good guy, a nice all-around guy. . . . If you had a problem with the car, he could tell you the problem," Peterson said.

Peterson said the television was on when he left the garage to go to a family party. If only he had stayed, Peterson said, he might have been able to help save his friend.