Fire scene is still a mystery

Authorities still don’t know if the bones found at the Cave Spring are human or animal.

Two weeks after a fire destroyed an old cabinlike home outside of Cave Spring, authorities still cannot say whether or not the elderly resident of the home died in the blaze.

“It still bothers me that I have not found anything that I can identify as completely being a human bone,” said Floyd County Coroner Gene Proctor on Monday.

Longtime resident Ed McKeon is still unaccounted for after the fire at 1506 Lyons Bridge Road. Property owner Wes Walraven said he believed McKeon was in his 80s and was not able to get around well on his own.

Floyd County police investigator Charlie Miller said that he has conducted two interviews with a friend of McKeon’s who had been with him at the home Monday night watching television.

The person left the residence close to 1 a.m. and told police McKeon was still watching television from an air mattress when he left.

“We don’t think there was any foul play involved,” Miller said.

The fire started sometime early Tuesday morning on January 2. The fire was discovered around 9:30 a.m. when a farm worker showed up at the remote property and discovered that the house had been destroyed and was still on fire.

Bone fragments were recovered from the debris and sent to the GBI Crime Lab.

“The medical examiners have looked at them and they’ve sent them on the state anthropologist,” Proctor said. “I’ve just got to wait on them at this point.”

The fact that they’ve found animal bones, including elk and deer racks and a dog skull, has complicated the investigation. They’re not even sure at this point if the bones found were human.

“The condition of the bones, was not good, nothing we found in there was good,” Proctor said.

Cadaver dogs examined the debris on two different occasions and they indicated that there may have been something in the area where the most recent bone fragments were located.