Crime & Safety

Minutes of Chaos, Hours of Frustration in Fatal Fire

Police reports portray a frantic scene as a mother, neighbors, officers and firefighters try to rescue man.

The last moments in the life of John K. Lorentz won't be pieced together until after an autospy and full investigation, and the reasons for his death may forever be a secret he took with him.

But detailed police reports paint a scene of fear and confusion for family members, neighbors, police officers and firefighters in the first minutes of where the body of Lorentz, 50, was later found.

According to officers' reports and detectives' interviews:

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  • One of Lorentz's brothers knew him to be in possession of a 12-gauge shotgun and possibly a .22-cal. handgun.
  • Both of two brothers interviewed described him as an alcoholic who occasionally "went on a bender," and his mother said that he was intoxicated at the time of his death.
  • His brothers said he was a self-employed handyman who was often out of work.
  • His mother said that the second floor of the home they shared at 1430 N. 119th St. was his personal space that no one, not even she, was allowed to enter.

Lorentz's mother, Jean L. Lorentz, 74, told a detective she had gone to bed downstairs at 1 a.m. and didn't know what her son was doing at the time. She was awakened in the morning by a very loud noise that she described as a "boom." She thought it sounded like something very heavy falling to the floor.

She called out to her son to learn what had happened, but she got no reply. So she got up and went to the top of the stairs, where she found the door closed, as usual, but not locked. She pushed on the door but couldn't open it, as there was something heavy against it on the inside.

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She said when she pushed on the door she heard “a voice.” She had trouble describing it but said it was a groaning sound.

After a few tries, she was able to shove the door open a few inches and was met by a blast of intense heat and clouds of smoke pouring through the opening.

In retrospect, she told the detective, she believes it was her son blocking the door, possibly injured or incapacitated.

A neighbor reacts

Meanwhile, Jean Lorentz's next-door neighbor was walking his dog when he saw flames coming from the home. He ran first to the back of the house and knocked on the door but got no answer. He then ran to the front of the house and met Lorentz coming out.

He entered the home in the hope of helping John Lorentz get out, but he was unable to make it upstairs because of the heavy smoke. He told detectives all he heard from upstairs was a "gurgling" sound.

He ran out of the house to call 911.

First officer on the scene

The first police officer arrived within a minute after the fire was reported at 8:57 a.m. He said he saw smoke and flames coming from the second story and immediately encountered an elderly woman — soon identified as Jean Lorentz — who said her son was intoxicated and still inside the house.

Three officers entered the house and called out but got no response, and there was too much smoke for them to attempt a rescue. The reporting officer was standing in the open doorway to the house when firefighters arrived.

He watched two of them climb the stairs and said that as they reached the top, he saw one of the firefighters falling down the stairs on his stomach, but he did not mention having heard anything.

The officer backed out of the doorway and two firefighters dove out the door onto the lawn. One of them said that someone was shooting at them upstairs. The officer immediately grabbed Jean Lorentz and tried to escort her away. He said she resisted and struck him, saying she wanted to die and had nothing to live for. She had to be physically taken away.

The officer called in on his radio, “Shots fired,” then determined that all the firefighters were accounted for and none injured. He advised them to stay behind their trucks until additional officers arrived. He said he never saw any movement from inside the residence.

A rescue aborted

Two of the first firefighters to arrive are both veterans with about 25 years service.

They also encountered Jean Lorentz outside, and said she told them her son was inside and had been drinking, and that “he did not want to come out of the house.”

The two entered the house, calling out “Fire Department!" repeatedly as they headed upstairs. Just as the lead firefighter reached the landing at the top of the stairs, the other heard a single, loud “bang” from somewhere ahead and to the left.

He told detectives he immediately thought it was a gunshot and believed they were being fired upon. He said that his partner must have believed the same, as he fell over him in the process of getting out. Both ran out of the home and told police they thought a shot might have been fired at them.

Fire Chief Rob Ugaste said Thursday that both firefighters were familiar with guns and gunfire and that he did not doubt their judgment. Police officers outside the house also heard the sound and reacted initially as they would to a gunshot.

The veteran firefighters, in heavy gear, descended the stairway so fast one of them dropped a thermal imaging unit inside the house. It has been recovered and is thought to be repairable, Ugaste said.

Fire and frustration

In the aftermath of those brief minutes of chaos, police ordered all firefighters back and out of the line of sight of the burning house, believing that there could be a "shooter" on the second floor.

For the next hour and a half, fire units faced an almost unimaginable scenario: a fully engaged house fire that they could not fully fight; a victim known to be inside whom they could not attempt to rescue.

The firefighters deployed what Chief Ugaste called "creative" ways of getting water onto the blaze. They put up a 100-foot ladder from a truck parked under the cover of another house and began "lobbing" water over it. Firefighters moving hose lines anywhere near the line of sight did so behind bulletproof shields held in front of them by police officers.

Eventually, it was decided that no one in the house could possibly have survived, and firefighters were permitted to approach with hoses and pour water directly on the fire. By then, the house had long since become a total loss.

Ugaste has been a professional firefighter for 31 years, the past 13 as a chief officer. He said he had never experienced a situation like the one presented Thursday.

"I've been in a couple of situations where there were hazardous materials and we had to back off, but this is... unusual," he said.

His firefighters "went in prepared to make a rescue in what looked to be a pretty straightforward fire. It's very frustrating for us to let a fire burn. That's not what we do; we put out fires.

"But we had to take into account the safety of all concerned, the neighbors, firefighters, police. If there's still a shooter, we have to do the only prudent thing.

"You can imagine, though, how difficult it must be for a firefighter to pull out of a rescue because apparently the victim just didn't want to be rescued."

A genial if quirky man

Certainly, John Lorentz was a bit unusual. Neighbors said he often did yard work at night and stayed holed up in the house during the day, puttering. But they also said he was a kind and quiet man.

Despite his troubles with alcohol, both his brothers and his mother said that he was always genial, never agressive or confrontational whether drunk or sober. His brothers said the family appreciated that he stayed with their mother, who is a bit frail, as it allowed her to keep her independence.

Both brothers said they had spoken recently and at length with Lorentz, one of them just the day before, and he had been upbeat.

In spite of his somewhat reclusive behavior, both brothers said, they were unaware of any medical or mental diagnosis or any treatment that he was undergoing that would make him dangerous or despondent. And both of them and their mother said it was unthinkable that he would ever fire a gun at anyone.

The firearms Lorentz had access to were all hunting weapons, his brothers said, and the family's shared collection was usually kept at a vacation home in northern Wisconsin. However, a .22-cal. pistol had gone missing a few years before, and one brother said he knew that John Lorentz had a shotgun that he had borrowed for hunting and had forgotten to return.

He said he thought it possible that John also had the missing pistol.


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