FATAL BLAZE NEAR PATTON WAS DELIBERATELY SET, SAYS FIRE OFFICIAL

PATTON -- A Tuesday fire at a home for mentally handicapped people that claimed the life of one resident was deliberately set, state fire officials said Wednesday.

The victim is identified as David Wilder, 58, of Patton. Wilder was one of 17 residents of Mary's Ranch, a private, residential-care facility for the mentally handicapped.

State Fire Marshall Butch Amman said the fire was set in one of the resident's rooms near the east end of the building.

Authorities don't believe that whoever started the fire had criminal intentions, Amman said, and they are not ruling it arson.

"We think something occurred that caused a fire to be set, but I don't believe there was criminal intent," Amman said.

Fire officials are approaching the investigation much like they would a case where a fire was started as a result of a child playing with matches, Amman said.

But officials are not sure what materials may have been used to start the fire, he said.

Firefighters found the body of Wilder, dressed in pajamas, in bed in his room, which was in the middle of the facility's residential wing.

Authorities said the group home staff was able to evacuate all of the residents except Wilder. Heavy smoke in the area of the victim's bedroom kept would-be rescuers away, they said.

The body was taken to Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Festus Wednesday for an autopsy and returned to the Liley Funeral Home in Patton.

The one-story, ranch-style house with extended residential wing and basement is along Highway 72, about three miles west of the Highway 72-51 intersection near Patton in Bollinger County.

Bob Bax, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Mental Health in Jefferson City, said Wilder had lived in Southeast Missouri for nine years and worked at the Sheltered Workshop near Marble Hill since 1977.

Wilder was one of 11 clients of the Department's Division of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities who lived at the facility. Five of the residents were clients of the department's Division of Comprehensive Psychiatric Services. The other three were non-department residents.

Bax said one resident was taken to a Cape Girardeau hospital as a precaution but was treated and released.

Bax said the mentally handicapped clients were sheltered at the Sikeston Regional Center and the psychiatric services clients were being cared for by the Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center at Farmington.

Amman said many residents lost all their possessions in the fire.

Jim Bollinger, Marble Hill Fire Chief, said the fire was reported at about 9 p.m.

Bollinger said that when the first responding fire department arrived, flames and smoke were coming out of a window of one of the bedrooms in the residential wing, and heavy smoke was coming from the rest of the wing.

Bollinger said actual fire damage was confined to one room, with extensive heat and smoke damage to the rest of the residential wing. There was light smoke damage to the older portion of the building.

Bollinger said the residential wing was added to the older building, which he said is about 25 years old.

Fire departments from three counties responded to the fire, including Patton, Scopus, Cherokee Pass, Millersville, and the Bollinger County Civil Defense Fire Department.

A spokesman for the Missouri Division of Aging said the group home was licensed by that agency, and had passed a fire and safety inspection in August.