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An unidentified Maryville man was killed in a trailer fire early Saturday, and another man was injured when he tried to enter the burning structure to help the victim.
The victim of the fire has not been identified, and according to information from the Blount County Sheriff’s department, his identity will not be available until a Monday autopsy at University of Tennessee Medical Center is complete.
The fire was reported at about 2:30 a.m. Saturday at 802 Edna Garland Road. When personnel from the Blount County Sheriff’s Office and Blount County Fire Department, the trailer was reportedly completely engulfed in flames.
A neighbor of the deceased man, Mark Anthony Payne, 24, reportedly tried to enter the burning trailer to help the victim, and received minor burns to his face and nose. Payne was taken to Blount Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for his injuries and released.
After the fire was extinguished, the body of the victim was found on the living room floor of the trailer.
A fire investigator with the Blount County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the fire. It does not appear that the cause of the blaze is suspicious in nature.
Accident involving neighbor
Little more than 12 hours after the fire, Payne was again taken to Blount Memorial Hospital after he was in a two-vehicle accident on Morganton Road.
According to information from the Blount County Sheriff’s Office, Payne was driving a 1989 GMC truck south on Morganton Road at about 3:45 p.m., when he veered in front of a vehicle driven by Linda Johnson, 47, Hickory Corner Drive, Maryville, and clipped her passenger-side mirror, hood and windshield. Payne’s vehicle then reportedly traveled up an embankment on the northbound side of the road, before returning to the roadway and striking a vehicle driven by Sherri Peak, 43, Peak Way, Maryville.
According to the Blount County Sheriff’s Office, witnesses at the scene said Payne’s vehicle had been traveling “all over the road.”
The force of the impact caused Payne’s vehicle to flip onto its top and sent Peak’s vehicle 40 feet down an embankment on the southbound side of Morganton Road.
According to Dennis Patty, who lives near the site of the crash, he heard a loud boom from the impact and ran out to see what happened. He said he saw Payne crawling through the passenger-side window of his truck onto the pavement. Payne said his grandfather was also in the vehicle, Patty said, but authorities did not find another person in or around his vehicle after the wreck.
When Payne went off the road, his vehicle cut a gouge in the embankment and hit Patty’s mailbox, sending it flying an estimated 150 feet — “At least 150 feet,” he said. Patty said he had gone to get his mail minutes earlier and just missed being part of the accident.
“If (the accident) had been four or five minutes earlier, I’d have been a dead man,” he said.
Apparently Payne also clipped a telephone pole before getting back on the road and hitting Peak’s vehicle, Patty said, because the power lines “were doing jump ropes” from the impact.
According to the Blount County Sheriff’s Office, Payne, Peak and a passenger in her vehicle, Todd Peak, 12, were taken by Rural/Metro Ambulance Service to Blount Memorial Hospital. According to Blount Memorial, Payne was treated and released, but the hospital did not have any information on the conditions of Sherri and Todd Peak. Johnson was not injured in the accident.
Patty said he was glad, but surprised, that the injuries from the accident weren’t worse.
“This is the worst (accident) I’ve seen where no one got killed,” he said.